


Infection

by Ms_Julius



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-07-07 19:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ms_Julius/pseuds/Ms_Julius
Summary: When there is a breach in Shatterdome's safety protocols, Newton is forced to re-evaluate his relationship with his lab partner.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first time writing for this fandom, so any feedback is greatly appreciated!  
> You can find me from Tumblr as well: https://ms-julius.tumblr.com/

Walking inside of the K-science wing, Hermann was almost pushed off his feet when a large metal cart came into his view, parked right before the door of the lab he shared with Newton.

Sometimes, albeit not often, the couriers left the salvaged kaiju parts openly in the hallway near the lab instead of bringing them all the way inside. To this day, Hermann was not certain if it was because of the strict time-schedule, or was his unconventional coworker who scared them away. After all, Newton had earned himself quite a reputation around the base with his fierce attitude towards the people who dared to lay a finger on his samples.

While he was trying to squeeze past the sizeable cart, a piece of flesh came loose from the hurriedly stacked pile of entrails. It landed on the front of his blazer, the sickening smell of a kaiju blue nearly making Hermann gag.

This was not an ideal start for his day.

“Newton, what is this?”

Without moving his eyes from the trolley in front of him, Hermann let out a tired sigh and used his cane to push it back towards the open door of the lab. “Newton!”

“ _What_ !” A loud bang rang through the room as the biologist finally emerged from behind a specimen tank, brows furrowed and mouth pouting. It was clear he had been in the middle of a dissection. There were splatters of blue liquid painted all across his apron, his sleeves luckily saved by the fact that the man had for once remembered to roll them up before diving head first into the heap of a dead body tissue.

“What the hell are you screaming at?” He was already pulling off his stained rubber gloves. “Y’know, most people start with a simple greeting when they -”

“There is a cart full of kaiju parts lying in our doorway,” Hermann interrupted, grimacing as he took a better look at the state the parts were in. “And I suspect it has been there for a while now.”

Newton’s eyes grew wide at that. “They left it in the hall again?” he asked, walking swiftly past Hermann and into the main hall. “I told them to stop doing that weeks ago! They should be brought in through the back loading deck. Doesn’t anyone around here know a thing about preserving rare samples correctly?”

There was a small voice inside of Hermann’s head tempting him to point out that demanding such a knowledge from a common courier service, whose main line of work had nothing to do with the kaiju, was a bit of a stretch, but he ignored it in favor of following the other man into the hallway. Newton was standing next to the cart, eyeing the parts in it with a critical gaze.

“I think they’re okay for now. I might have to keep them in a stasis for a while, but they should still be useable.”

Hermann couldn’t resist the urge to roll his eyes. “Oh joy. And here I was worrying we may never have an another pile of rotting alien flesh in our lab again.”

“Shut up Hermann,” Newton said, glancing at him across the metal stand. “These rotting pieces are what will save your sorry ass when the next kaiju decides to come visit. ”His voice dropped a bit as he leaned closer to the samples, “Unlike your over-complicated calculations.”

“Excuse me? ”Hermann’s grip on his cane tightened. “Your futile attempts of playing a kaiju doctor are absolutely pointless if my calculations wouldn’t be there to tell you when they are needed!”

Newton straightened his pose and lifted his eyes from the mess on the trolley. “Oh really? And how, pray tell, do your numbers help when the kaiju are already on top of us, huh? Do they tell you where to strike? Give you any clue how to take one down?” He was moving towards Hermann now, eyes narrowed and already fuming.

They were at it once again, arguing over nothing, but as always, Hermann couldn’t exactly bring himself to back down. This was a pattern to them at this point, and neither one seemed to know how to stop.

“Perhaps not, but if you think for a second that your experiments hold any meaning on their own, you are severely mistaken!” Hermann could see his knuckles turning white around the cane. “And furthermore, it’s not like you are the one taking them down either, now is it?”

Newton’s ears turned pink, and he moved away from the trolley, the specimens clearly forgotten. His shrilling voice rose up to new heights as he shouted loudly enough for the whole base to hear: “Maybe we should just toss you out from the front door next time one comes over! See how your precious numbers help you then!”

Hermann huffed, rolling his eyes again. “Well perhaps we should just plug you on the rooftop and use you as an alarm siren! It would be far more practical use of your talents.”

“At least I’d be contributing something to the battle! Unlike you, stuck in the lab and unwilling to take a slightest risk or chance under the guise of ‘trusting in numbers’! What a joke, dude.” With a swift wave of a hand, Newton turned around and slipped past the trolley into the hallway beyond. “I’mma go and straighten this thing up with the Marshal. Try not to hurt yourself with that stick in your arse while I’m gone.”

Before Hermann got an answer out, the fuming biologist had already moved through the door, pushing the trolley further into the room as he went. The door itself was left ajar, a habit of which Hermann had complained numerous times before, with little results as it seemed.

Sighing to himself, a feeling of a headache forming at  the back of his skull, Hermann reached out and pulled the heavy door shut. It did reduce the noise coming from outside of the lab as well as  inside of it, and more often than not it offered him a welcomed excuse to claim he hadn’t heard someone trying to get in when he was working. With all of the noise coming from the machines around the lab, as well as his notoriously vocal lab partner, who could blame him? He cherished the tiny snips of peace whenever he could, given the circumstances.

Once he was certain that the door was truly fallen shut behind Newton, Hermann turned and walked over to his blackboards, ready to continue the equation he had been solving on the day before.

The trolley stood forgotten beside the door.

* * *

 Newton was stomping, and he knew it.

His sneakers thumped against the metal floors loudly, drawing attention from the new workers around him, but the standard staff merely glanced at him as he passed by, well familiar with his tendency to sulk by now. It was not a rare occasion for either one of the K-science doctors to vent in the common hallways, their mutters and frowns a mundane sight at this point. Not once had anyone made a mistake of trying to ask about it from them, and Newton prefer it that way.

He didn’t think these people would actually understand his frustration.

Hermann was a smart guy, he was not going to deny that. The maths he worked with, and the dedication he showed towards his research was undeniable, rivaling even that of Newton’s own, but still there was something in that man that just drove Newt off the walls.

Over the years he had managed to narrow his irritation on few specific parts of Hermann’s personality; his arrogant, smug grin whenever he proved Newton wrong was one of the first ones he had found particularly annoying. The way he kissed up Marshal was a close second. Newton himself was never a fan of authorities, quite opposite in fact, but Hermann seemed to have this unwavering respect towards those who held power over him. Newton couldn’t exactly call him out of it thought, since Hermann’s honoring relationship with Pentecost was saved both of their asses more than once.

Not that he would ever admit that to Hermann.

“Maybe I should start to file complains about him too!” he muttered, ignoring the strange looks the interns were casting on him. “ ‘Oh Marshall, Dr. Gottlieb trashed my CD-player with his cane this morning’, or ‘Mr. Pentecost, sir, just now Dr. Gottlieb called me a numbskulled sack of idiocy in front of other members of the staff’. Should see how he likes that.”

His mumbling had carried him all the way over to the Marshall’s office without him realising, so it took him a moment to break his train of thoughts before entering the lion’s den. Pentecost had expressed his distaste for the two scientist’s bickering multiple times, and Newton was not about to poke a stick at the beehive. He’d behave, if only for the sake of his argument being taken seriously enough.

He barely had knocked on the closed door when a low voice came from the inside. How the man had known Newton was standing there, he’d never guess.

“Come in, doctor Geiszler.”

Carefully, Newton pushed the door open, fixing his glasses as he looked over the wooden desk in the centre of the room. Pentecost was sitting in his office chair, a pile of papers stacked by his elbow and a pencil in hand. When Newton stepped fully inside and failed to close the door behind, an exasperated sigh was aimed at him.

“How’d you know it was me?” Newton asked, settling in a vacant chair opposite of the Marshall. “You couldn’t hear me past the metal door, could you?”

“No, doctor, I did not.” Pentecost had long since given up on hope of trying to get Newton use titles like ‘sir’ or ‘Mr’. “I merely received a warning text from my secretary who happened to pass you by in the hall. Apparently, you had ‘the look’ on your face, and he deemed it necessary to inform me of your possible visit.”

“Smart man.” Newton knew he was fidgeting more than usual, his argument with Hermann still bubbling in his veins. It was a difficult feeling to shake off, he’d come to notice. “So listen, I’m here because the courier service screwed up again. There was a cart full of kaiju parts at our doorstep today, brought in through the main door instead of the back.”

The pencil in Pentecost's hand was set down, his focus now shifting over to the man in front of him. “I thought this problem had been solved days ago. We went over the importance of the safety doors and checklists, as well as the new location of the decontamination station installed on the loading deck instead of the main hall.” The Marshall raised an eyebrow, throwing a questioning glare at Newton. “Didn’t you instruct the new delivery staff about the safety regulations when they started?”

“I did! I told them that -” suddenly halting, Newton’s eyes grew wider when a startling new thought occurred to him. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘new staff’?”

“I am talking about the new company we ordered the service from a week ago,” Pentecost said, now frowning. “You were aware that there has been changes in the staff, correct?”

A knot of cold apprehension began to roam around in Newton’s stomach. “I uhh, I wasn’t made aware of that.” Had he, thought? When he recalled a conversation between him and Hermann, there might have been some talk about the fact that the workers of the Shatterdome moved on fast nowadays, and Hermann had said something about the note concerning a new patch of employees...

That was when the alarm went off.

* * *

A horrible day. Without a doubt, an awful, atrocious day to start his week with.

After Newton’s departure, Hermann had spent quite a while slaying over his blackboards, the numbers forming a complicated map of calculations and solutions. There were miles to go, certainly, but for now Hermann was contented with the progress he was making so far. He always savored the silent moments between the times when Newton actually exited the lab and left him alone for few hours, and the times when they were both too immersed in their analysis that they didn’t leave the room for a couple of days.

It all had appeared to go smoothly. His work was advancing, there was no loud, heavy music pulsing around the lab, and he had almost succeeded at shutting off the nauseating stench coming from the trolley by the door where they’d left it.

And then it had hit him.

It wasn’t supposed to smell like anything, not yet at least. The kaiju parts which came through the formal route had to go past the port of disinfecting and sterilizing water pumps before they were allowed in the lab. Once Newton has cut them open, however, the smell would overtake the entire room, but before that there shouldn’t be any apparent scent related to the specimens.

Not if they came past the decontamination.

His brows furrowing, Hermann had taken a step towards the cart, his eyes scanning the surface of the flesh and scales. It hadn’t began to decompose yet, but it was clear that it wouldn’t take long for it to start to.

And then he had noticed the small insects running along the bones peeking from the bleeding cut of what appeared to be a piece of kaiju’s jaw.

It never went through the disinfection.

Hermann could feel the immediate panic washing over him as he stared at the cart. His heart was beginning to beat faster when the gravity of the situation downed upon him, a trail of sweat running down his spine. There was a unclean piece of an alien’s corpse in the lab. No way of telling what diseases were lurking beneath the scaled skin, already oozing out through the cuts of the flesh.

With a quick push of his cane, Hermann shoved the reeking trolley further away from him and the door, sending it rolling to the other end of the room. He knew it did nothing to prevent the likely contamination of the lab, or himself since he had already breathed the air for several minutes, but he couldn’t help but feel the need to be as far away from the source as possible. When the cart hit the wall, he spun around and made his way over to the control panel at the far his side of the room, trying his best not to trip over as his grip on the cane wavered.

These things weren’t supposed to happen. This is why they had the procedures, the precautions, the plans! There simply shouldn’t be a scenario where a break in the protocol could cause such a hazard for the people working in the Shatterdome. The building was supposedly the most secure place to be for now, and still there had been a breach. Hermann could almost hear the thumping in his chest, the panic raising the longer he thought about it. How long had the trolley stood in their open doorway? Could it be that the infection had spread already, despite the poor ventilation on the hallway leading up to the science wing?

Had Newton caught it?

Hermann managed to stumble his way to the metallic table, his breath coming in short gasps as he reached out for the red button at the top corner. It was protected by a plastic lid, bearing a warning label on it. Hermann’s fingers were shaking when he lifted the cover and finally punched his palm on the switch.

The change was instant. The door he had pushed shut earlier let out a loud clank as the security locks sprang to life, sealing the lab from the rest of the building. The flow of the air stopped for a moment, the machinery coming to a halt before the oxygen filter came online. It would purify all the air coming and going past it, allowing breathing in the room even if the mechanism itself was being shut down.

It would raise the temperature, but in exchange for a breathable air, Hermann was more than willing to comply.

The lights would stay on, but the energy in the more complex machines was cut off, preventing any major breakings while the lab was in quarantine. Normally that would have riled Hermann up, but right now he couldn’t care less if he would be unable to continue his work during this. For the first time in a while, his research was the last thing in his mind.

He’d just need to remain calm. There was no need to stir himself into a full blown panic attack, especially since the filtered ventilation would supply a considerably less oxygen for him to breath. Gasping and huffing would do little to improve his current state, quite the opposite.

Hermann was suddenly struck by an absurd image of Newton jumping around the lab, screaming with that high-pitched voice of his, babbling on and on about all the possible infections swirling in the air. How the filtering was not a guaranteed way of ensuring that they’d be provided enough air, and how he would kill the person or persons responsible for such a waste of kaiju samples.

Perhaps it was better that Newton was not in here with him. Hermann wasn’t sure he’d be able to endure the man and his statements at the moment.

His leg was beginning to show signs of protest from the amount of time he had been standing still, and so Hermann adjusted his grip on his cane slightly, and turned to head towards the leather couch at the Newton’s side. It was a worn-out thing, a mere remnant of a furniture offered to them by the tech group when they received a new one in their break room some time ago. The fabric had seen better days, but it was a comfortable enough, and so it had earned a place near the line separating the two half of the room. They had sat on it maybe twice, never together, and always ready to jump up when the work called for it. And now, Hermann was more grateful than ever that they had saved it.

As he sat down, he felt a cough crawling its way up his throat. A harsh, scratching sensation wouldn’t cease even when he gave in a coughed out loud, and the force of the fit made him double over despite his aching leg. It went on for a long while as well, a slight spike of dread slowly clinging in Hermann’s mind. He didn’t seem able to catch his breath, his lungs burning as he tried to lean down, clasping his right hand over his lips in a vain attempt to stifle the hacking set of coughs.

His suspicious were confirmed when he took his hand away from his mouth, and saw the drops of red spotting the skin of his palm.

A horrible day indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

**_“Biohazard in the sector Z. Biohazard in the sector Z. All personnel, evacuate the area.”_ **

The people stumbling and running in the hallways moved aside as Newton and Pentecost rushed past them. The sirens were going off all around Shatterdome, and red alarm lights flashed above the open doorways leading up towards the far corner of the building. Newton ignored most of the shouts aimed at him, and picked up his speed when the main entrance to the labs came into his view.

He was scared. It was not a common occurrence, but he had felt this kind of cold dread before. Back then it was caused by the enormous monsters rising beneath the sea, rampaging through the town and sending countless limps bodies flying across the streets and over the roofs. But while standing in the middle of the chaos, the screams and smoke blurring his senses, his fear was being poked by something else entirely; fashination.

That was his spark. His ability to see even the most destructive elements of nature as mere puzzles for him to solve. Mysteries, enigmas, all so intriguing and alluring.

But not this time. Now, the only feeling welling in the pit of this stomach was a pure fear, and when he caught the looks on the faces surrounding him as he ran, he saw the same static horror reflected back to him. They all knew the protocol, and for the most part, followed it through their everyday lives, but when the sirens began to ring, and when it became clear they were not warnings of an outside threat but that of the inside, nobody seemed to be sure how to react. The term ‘biohazard’ was familiar to everyone working at the Jaegers-project, but never before had an actual breach of this caliber broken free inside Shatterdome.

First time for everything.

Finally Newton reached the double doors sealing off the K-science wing from the rest of the base. However, when he tried to pull them open, nothing happened. On the second tug, the lock let out a quiet click in confirmation that the doors had indeed been secured, not allowing anyone without a proper ID card to pass.

Just as he was about to kick the metal gate in his frustration, a loud voice called out to him from one of the corridors branching out from the lab’s hallway.

“Newt! You can’t go in there, the whole place is in a lockdown.” When Newton turned around, he could see Tendo jogging towards him with Pentecost on his tail. The technician was holding a tablet, his fingers curled around on the device as he ran.

“Tendo!” With a final glance at the doors, Newton faced away from the them. He knew he couldn’t get through, not with his security level. Instead, he focused his whole attention to the panting pair of men now standing in front of him in the narrow hallway.

Before either one of them said anything, Newton was already bouncing on his heels, anxiety pushing his brain on overdrive. “What the hell is going on? It’s not an actual biohazard breakout, is it?”

By now he had prepared himself to the fact that it most likely would be, but still there was a glimmer of hope that somebody had simply pressed the alarm buzzer by accident.

His hopes were crushed when he saw the look his friend gave to him. “I’m sorry buddy, but it does seem like it. We got the alert from the lab about ten minutes ago, and since then we’ve been guiding people to the decontamination stations.” He pressed a button on the tablet, opening up a map of Shatterdome. “Most of the employees are there now.”

“What about my samples?” Newton said, flinging a hopeful glance at the locked doors behind him. “I thought I’d have some time to save at least some of them.” It was the main reason he had rushed to the science wing in the first place. It wasn’t like Hermann would’ve had any interest in trying to preserve Newton’s unfinished work before the evac. The man wouldn’t dare to touch a kaiju flesh even with a five foot long stick.

Next to him, Tendo threw an odd look at him, a mixture of a mild amusement and a hint of sympathy. “Newt, the lab is a red zone. There’s no way you’re allowed to move anything out from there.”

Pentecost had stepped closer to the two of them, and was frowning slightly as he eyed the sealed doors. His gaze was critical, calculating. “Mr. Choi, tell the medical centre to ready their rooms and call all available paramedics back on duty. We are going to cut this short before it gets a chance to spread.”

“Already done, sir,” Tendo said, tapping at the touch screen as he spoke. “We also have set up a cleaning group for the contaminated area. They are standing by for now, but as soon as we get all the personnel out of the way, we can send them in and make sure all the machinery gets cleansed as well.”

Newton couldn’t help but sigh. “Oh man, Hermann is gonna be so pissed when he finds out what you’re going to do to his precious machines and blackboards. He has basically grown bodily attached with the damn things.”

Tendo’s posture tensed, fingers freezing on the screen he had been tapping. His eyes glanced quickly at the Marshall before coming to rest on Newton, a troubled look transparent enough.

The sudden change in the air sent a new jolt of unease up Newton’s spine. “What?”

Tendo’s voice, when he eventually spoke out, was unusually quiet.

“I think doctor Gottlieb has other things to worry about right now.”

Before Newton could ask what that was supposed to mean, a young intern peeked around the corner of the hallway. Her face was pale and she looked a bit unsteady on her feet, but the words she called out echoed loudly in the empty corridor.

“Mr. Choi, we have a visual to the lab.”

* * *

It was getting worse.

Hermann surged forward, almost missing the trash can set beside the couch as he heaved out his lasts of his latest meal. The hacking cough had eased off for now, but the constant feeling of nausea was not a great replacement by any means. He could still taste the copper in his mouth, but washing it away with the bottled water had proven to be a ill-advised effort, as the evidence in the trash can showed.

“Should have stayed in bed today,” he muttered to himself, planting a sweating hand on his forehead. His body temperature had began to climb, but was it because of the infection, or the fact that the lab was altogether more warm at this point since the less efficient ventilation system? Hermann couldn’t be sure. But then again, the knowledge would do him little good right now.

He was afraid. Who wouldn’t be, in his state? There was an unknown alien disease on the loose, and he was currently locked in the same space with the suspected source. He did take some contentment from the fact that with any luck, he had managed to contain the infection in this one room, protecting the rest of the base and the people in it. He might not have many friends in Shatterdome, but the thought of the thousand sick-ridden bodies lying on the halls of the one place he’d considered as home was a revolting one.

However, he couldn’t quite suppress the disappointment he felt for the lab. Over the years, he had spent more time within its walls than he ever did outside of them. Countless of hours in front of his blackboards, eyes glued to the equations and blind to everything else. Well, except for Newton. The man had an unfortunate talent to shock him back to the reality, no matter how deep he would dive into the world of numbers. And he did it so effortlessly too.

Sometimes Hermann toyed with a thought that Newton’s late night shifts were occupied by him planning on new ways to crawl under Hermann’s skin.

As his thoughts turned to his lab partner, Hermann found his gaze wandering over the yellow tape to the other side of the room. His side, as always, was a picture of perfect. Every file in their place, machinery clean and ready to go, a complete opposite to Newton’s mess of equipments which were scattered all across the free floor space. Between the two sides, there was a wide, wooden table. A pile of paper stacked at the edge of it. A neat pile, not in danger of tumbling over. Newton’s, unsurprisingly, had collapsed onto the ground, adding to the already chaotic mess covering the concrete.

During their days of working together, Hermann had come to expect such sloppiness from Newton. He had worked around it, most of the time, and refrained from pointing out every pile and mound of trash cluttering Newton’s half of the lab. After all, it had been one of the main reasons they had divided the space to begin with; so that Hermann wouldn’t have to deal with Newton’s inability to maintain a clean working environment.

But now, he’d have to pick his way through said trash. With a heavy sigh, he pushed himself up to his feet. Carefully, taking one faltering step and the time, he moved to the desk. It was the only real piece of furniture they both had agreed to share, and mostly it was littered with Newton’s unfinished reports and coffee mugs. Still, Hermann occasionally used the desk as well, choosing to store his latest paperwork on the corner of it for easier access during late nights. It was far quicker to grab the papers from there on his way to the simulator rather than make an extra trip to his own personal desk standing at the end of his side. He had done so last evening, and he could see the stack was still standing right next to Newton’s half-drank energy drink. Despite the growing ache in his head, or perhaps because of it, Hermann reached out and tossed the sticky can back over the line onto Newton’s side.

They’d clean the lab anyway. One piece of junk wouldn’t be a problem.

He couldn’t stop the sigh of relief escaping from him when he came to stop next to the chair. Balancing his weight on his better leg, Hermann bent slightly in order to set his cane against the desk before slumping down behind it. There were certain scripts he’d like to save, but given the situation they would most likely be destroyed with everything else in the lab that couldn’t be sprayed with a decontamination chemicals.

Running his fingers over the pile, Hermann picked up one of the bottom ones, turning the paper over before spotting the title he had written in previous night. This was a start of a new code for the jaeger weapons, just a raw sketch for now, but Hermann hated the thought of losing any parts of his work. He had planned the removable gun pieces for a long time, but the amount of actual code he had worked out was easily contained to a two sheets of paper.

So, reaching out for a tablet on the table (Newton’s, apparently, judged by the mild stains on the touch screen) Hermann started to copy the lines of numbers and letters from the papers. That way he could save the progress even if they ended up disposing his original plans.

After a few minutes, a green signal light sparked to life on the top corner of the screen. A little symbol of a phone was shown, suggesting there was a video call incoming. For a moment Hermann simply stared at it, mind still wrapped around the code, but as the signal became accompanied by a piping sound, he snapped out of it and clicked the icon.

He was greeted by Newton’s furious face.

* * *

 “What do you mean he’s still in there?"

The staff in the LOCCENT immediately scrambled away from the swinging arms of doctor Geiszler. The man had been screaming for a while now, and even the most recent additions to the personnel possessed enough common sense to keep their distance as the small spectacled biologist kept on shrieking at the Marshall. Tendo was the only technician standing close to the eye of the storm, but he was familiar with Newton’s tendency to lash out. Nothing he hasn’t seen before.

“Doctor Geiszler, calm down!” The Marshall’s voice was a carrying one as well, booming in the metallic room filled with computers and screens on the walls. “You will get your answers once we’ve got the situation under control!” He turned around, beginning to bark out orders to the wide eyed personnel still lurking at the distance, ignoring the frustrated huffs coming from behind him.

Just as Newton opened his mouth to continue the argument, possibly slipping  further away from respectable speech, Tendo moved in and laid his hand on his shoulder. His gaze was calming and touch gentle as he steered Newton away from the commotion forming in the middle of the control hall. The other man came willingly, although still throwing quick glances at the Marshall.

“Hermann was the one who set off the alarm, Newt,” Tendo said, glancing at the flickering screen on the wall above them. “He sealed the lab from the inside.”

“Yeah, but why haven’t anyone gotten him out yet?” Newton’s voice was breaking the longer he yelled, but he didn’t care. All thoughts about his experiments and samples had been washed away at the second he heard that Hermann was locked inside of the hazard radius. Now he was worried about the stubborn man sitting alone in the one place in Shatterdome where no human had any business to be.

“We can’t get him out before we make sure that we have medics ready to treat him.” Pushing a button on the keyboard, Tendo brought the screen alive. “But we have a direct line to the lab, and if Ines is ready by now, we can start a video chat with Hermann. Of course given that he has a working tablet or laptop with him.”

“He does,” Newton said, crashing his full weight on the rolling chair near him. “We have a couple of each in the lab. Hermann insist on keeping them at full charge.” More often than not Newton found his own phone or tablet plugged into a charger by Hermann. It was a nice gesture, one of which Newton appreciated far more than he ever let on.

The screen was changing once again and a sudden sound of a phone ringing nearly made Newton jump.

“Ah, there we go,” Tendo sighed and raised his hand to wave a short thank you to the intern (whose name apparently was Ines, by the looks of it) before leaning away from the control panel. Pentecost, who was still talking to the other workers by the exit, turned to look when Tendo’s voice broke through the background noise of the centre. “Sir, we are connecting to the lab. Initiating the call as we speak.”

Immediately the Marshall swirled towards them, giving last instructions to the medical team before strolling across the room to stand behind Tendo’s chair. His hands curled around the leather back, and looking this closely, Newton could see how white his knuckles were.

Maybe the head of Shatterdome was not as calm and collected as he let out to be.

“Have we obtained a steady connection, Mr. Choi?” he asked, peering at the service bars at the bottom of the screen. “I’d hate to lose the link once we’ve got it.”

“It is as steady as it can be, sir,” Tendo said. “If doctor Gottlieb answers, we can began to record the call just in case we lose the connection in the middle of it.”

Just then the phone icon on the screen light up, and soon after the ashen face of one of the brightest minds in the whole base came to full view. The man looked like he had just been ran over by a train. His eyes seemed dulled, but he was sitting upright, even if they could see him leaning heavily against the desk he was seated behind.

Pentecost cleared his throat, raising his voice: “Doctor Gottlieb, how -”

“Hermann! What the fucking hell are you playing at?” All eyes turned to Newton, who had summarily pushed his superior officer aside and was now bending forward, almost smashing his nose against the webcamera. His shrieking voice was rising again, the volume louder by the minute. “When the alarm says ‘evacuate’, you _evacuate_ , you rigid son of a -”

“Doctor Geiszler!” The Marshall’s tone was enough to break the haze, and Newton turned to look at the fuming man beside him. His cheek colored slightly when he saw the glare aimed at him. “Mind your manners, or I’m forced to remove you from the LOCCENT for the time being.”

The threat did the trick, and even though he was far from calming down, Newton allowed Tendo to tug him back to the chair, the brown eyes bearing a silent warning. At the other end of the line, Hermann was looking even more taken back. Newton could see the way his friend began to play with the cuffs of his sleeves, a nervous habit he had practiced since the day they had started to work together. It was such a familiar sign of discomfort, and seeing it sent a spear of guilt through Newton’s chest.

He had been out of line. But he always was when it came to Hermann.

The LOCCENT fell silent as everybody’s attention was locked to the video feed and the Marshall’s second attempt to address the man on it. Newton remained quiet too, but just barely.

“Doctor Gottlieb, can you hear me clearly?” Pentecost said and beckoned Tendo to get ready to change the settings if needed. “Is there any disruptions in your end?”

It took a moment for Hermann to answer, but they saw him reach out outside of the the screen, adjusting something before speaking up. _“No sir, all seems fine for me.”_

“Good to hear. Now then, doctor. Can you tell us anything about the infection apparently on the loose in your lab?”

Newton was about to jump in, explaining his own theory of the possible source, but Hermann beat him to it, his accent becoming stronger by the end of his speech. _“I suspect the cause of the infection is a cart of fresh kaiju parts found at our lab doors this morning. They had not been disinfected before they were brought in. And as for the disease, I can only assume it spreads mainly through airways and touch. The former of course being harder to manage than the latter.”_ A dry cough broke off his sentence, a handkerchief covering parts of the screen as Hermann tried to stifle the fit. _“It seems to be attacking person’s respiratory system first.”_

A scowl on Pentecost lips grew harder. “Any other symptoms?”

Hermann was swaying lightly on his seat, and his hand, still squeezed around the tissue, seemed to be shaking. _“I- I have been feeling a bit dizzy. And... I threw up a moment ago.”_ Another hack of coughs shook his body. This time Hermann didn’t bother attempting to stop their course. _“Also, my muscles are beginning to ache.”_

“Stay where you are, doctor. We are sending out medical crew as soon as possible.” With a swing of his hand, Pentecost gave the signal to the small group of doctors standing by the exit. All of them were wearing a protective suit. “Set a quarantine area ready. We are bringing doctor Gottlieb out.”

The squat jumped to action in a blink of an eye, a pair of barrows assembled in few seconds and bags filled with equipments zipped shut. Moving as one, they raced out from the LOCCENT, their footsteps echoing in the hallways as they ran.

On the screen, Hermann’s head drooped suddenly. His tone was rough, pressed down by the urge to cough once more. _“Sir, there's blood in my mouth.”_ A pair of eerily white hands lifted to clasp against his eye sockets. _“I think I can hear whistles. Why is there someone whistling?”_ His head snapped up, a thick droplet of blood smeared all over his lower lip. He was breathing heavily. _“Newton, must you do that right now?”_

One could sense the tension raising in the ranks of the LOCCENT, a gloomy feeling of dread shared by every person in the room. With a mutual notion, they all turned around to look at the small man whose own wide eyes were nailed to the happenings of the screen. His face was as pale as Hermann’s.

It was Pentecost’s voice that pierced the dense silence. He wore a grim mask of feigned calmness, but Newton heard the fine tremor in it regardless.

“Doctor Gottlieb, you are aware that doctor Geiszler is not there with you, correct?”

The rapid change in Hermann’s posture was the only warning they got before the doctor jerked up to his feet, letting out a high whimper. His pupils were dilated, but his gaze had become unfocused once more. _“But I j-just saw him! He was...”_ They watched him take a glance around him, a wave of panic making its way into the trembling voice. _“Newton is always here. Why is he not here?”_

“Doctor Gottli- _Hermann_ ,” Pentecost corrected softly, “doctor Geiszler is here with me. Do you want to talk to him?”

For a second it looked like Hermann hadn’t heard him, but once Newton leaned in so that he was in the view of the camera, an expression of relief sweeped over Hermann’s features. _“Newton!”_

“Hey, Herms,” Newton said, trying his best to hide how shaken he felt. “How’s it going?”

 _“Why aren’t you here?”_ It sounded like an accusation, and the betrayed tilt in Hermann’s tone hit Newton hard.

“I left the lab some time ago, yeah? I had to go and see the Marshall,” he explained, searching for a signs of realisation from Hermann’s face.

He saw none.

Seemingly flustered, Hermann’s grip on his left cuff tightened as he continued to rub the fabric between his fingers. After a while of silence, he muttered out: _“Ah yes, of course. I... I must have forgotten.”_

“No worries dude, happens to the best of us.” Newton wasn’t at all certain where this conversation was going, but was determined to keep Hermann online until the paramedics arrived. “You just sit tight, okay? The medics are already on their way.”

 _“Medics?”_ Hermann grimaced. _“What medics?”_

Okay, this was beginning to be more than a bit worrying. “For you Hermann, remember? The sickness -”

 _“I am not sick!”_ Hermann screamed, face flushing to bright red. _“How can you say such a thing to me, Newton? I thought... It never bothered you before!”_ The accusing tone was back, but it was the least of Newton’s worries as he watched his lab partner tangle his own fingers in his hair, tugging violently. _“You said you didn’t mind!”_

Newton was sure everyone in the LOCCENT could hear the note of desperation when he blurted out: “This is not about your leg, Hermann! It’s the infection, that’s why -”

 _“No! Stop it, stop it, stop it!”_ The chair hit the floor with a clang, and the cane supported against the desk rolled down beside it. Unsteady on his feet, Hermann curled inwards, his ragged breathing coming out in a harsh bursts.

 _“What is happening? I don’t know what is happening!”_ A trickle of blood flowed past his upper lip. _“Newton, I -”_

The sickening thud of a body hitting the ground resonated through the room.

Newton was out from the LOCCENT before anyone else even managed to get their feet under them.


	3. Chapter 3

The scream of agony bounced around in the lab, but Hermann was too far gone to hear it. And even if he had, he’d never admit it came from his own throat.

The pain was excruciating. The veins in his limbs seemed to curl up, tucking violently under his crawling skin. Breathing was becoming more difficult by the minute, and the fits of coughs interrupted his weak attempts to gasp in some air. He couldn’t feel the coldness of the metallic floor against his heated cheek, but the way it swam under his unfocused gaze prompted him to close his eyes completely. It felt like his body was tearing itself apart.

For the first time in a while, Hermann was fearing for himself.

In the situation the world was in, it was not common for the members of Shatterdome to dwell in their personal despair. The amount of focus it took to simply keep the base running took up so much of their energy that worrying about one’s own survival rarely became an issue. They feared for the human race as a whole, not individuals. That was the mindset every worker had to drill in their heads before they were accepted as a member of the Jaeger-program. It was not about you, it was about all of them.

But now there were no _them_. Hermann was alone. And he was scared.

Forcing his eyes back open, his narrowed gaze found the fallen chair, and his cane lying on the floor next to it. It was within his reach, but as he tried to grab it, a surge of bolting cramp twisted his fingers into a tight fist. Hermann watched in stunned silence as his thumb bent towards his palm, the pain so severe he couldn’t stop the howl of anguish breaking out from his mouth. Panting heavily, he tumbled on his better side. He had to get up and move. Somewhere in the back of his brain, a small persistent and high-pitched voice was urging him to stand up, to make it to the door of the lab. But for the death of him, Hermann couldn’t remember why.

A sudden bang of a metal door hitting a wall startled him closer to full consciousness.

_**“Overwriting lock-down program. All systems offline.”** _

The set of rushing footsteps approached. There was a faint sound of a wheels scraping against the floor as well, and a dull bump when something heavy yet soft-textured was laid down near him.

“Doctor Gottlieb?”

He didn’t recognize the voice. It was a woman talking, that much he knew, but the possible name of the person was nowhere for him to find.

“I am paramedic, Jessie. We’ll just lay out the stretcher and then we are ready to bring you to the infirmary.”

A hospital. They were here to take him to the hospital. But surely he wouldn’t need to go alone? He never went alone, because Mutti was always there, holding his hand...

A violent shudder ran through him, a wave of nausea making itself known once more. His thoughts swam on in circles, melting together and emerging as something else entirely. No, mother was not here, this was not Germany. He was in Shatterdome, and Newton was the one who usually...

Shaking his head, Hermann managed to brace his upper body off the ground and met the gaze of a tall woman now squatted down beside him. She was wearing a gasmask, but due to the lack of distance between them, Hermann could hear her words clearly. Behind her, he saw a pair of two men laying down what he assumed to be the device to carry him out of the lab.

“Doctor Gottlieb, if you’d be so kind as to allow me to help you up, we can get you to the stretcher?” It sounded like a question, but in reality the medic was already wrapping her arms under his slumped body. She tugged him up in one swift movement, taking on his weight as they came to stand upwards.

He immediately felt disoriented. His legs gave in under him, unwilling to support his frame and the change from the floor to standing position enhanced his throbbing desire to keel over. But the worst part was his inability to form a coherent chain of thought capable of telling him what was going on around him. He remembered the sheet of worry on Newton’s face just a minute ago, but his brain was on fire, sending out signals all over his trembling body, most of them in conflict with each other. He wanted to obey, to allow these people to do their job. But some part of him was screaming for him to resist.

As they began their wobbly walk towards the small group of people waiting nearby, Hermann made an attempt to pull away from the strong woman next to him. “I... I do not believe I require any help, thank you.”

Without missing a beat, the medic quickly pulled him back. Her voice was stern, but under the cover of her mask, her eyes betrayed her concern. “Doctor, you’ve caught a very nasty infection. It would be best for all of us if you’d let us take you in.”

Hermann shook his head again, a line of blood running down from his nose. “I don’t... Why is my hand twisting like that?” The fingers on his left hand were twitching back and forth, the pain causing him to clench his jaws shut.  

One of the men stepped in, slipping his arm under Hermann’s elbow in order to help him on the stretcher. “Don’t you worry about that one bit, mate. They’ll sort it all out once we get you to the real professionals.” His accent was familiar, but Hermann couldn’t recall his name either. The light tone of his voice was soothing though, reminding him of someone else.

Together the two medics had enough strength to basically lift Hermann off his feet and lay him down on the yielding fabric on the floor. The rest of the group watched silently from the side until a sign was given to raise the device up. With a few quick adjustments, the stretcher was in the air, supported by two mask-covered medics.

Suddenly, Hermann’s eyes spotted something still lying on the ground.

“My cane! I need my cane!”

Inwardly, he grimaced when the hoarseness in his voice caused him to break into a new fit of coughs, but it was worth it when he saw one medic turning around and jogging towards the desk. His cane was picked up and delivered to him with a knowing nod from the woman who handed it off. When she turned away, Hermann gave in to the desire to run his thumb over the familiar feel of the wood beneath his fingers.

He knew he was being irrational. After all, he _was_ about to be carried out from the room all the way to the medbay. He didn’t need the cane right now. And yet he found the thought of leaving it behind unbearable.

Clutching the wooden walking stick tightly against his chest, he let his eyes snap shut when the feeling of being lifted up settled in. The sense of agitation flooded back, tying his stomach in painful knots.

“No need to worry, doc. It won’t take long before you’re lookin’ back at this with laugh.” The chatty paramedic smirked down at him as they finally carried him out through the heavy metal doors.

Hermann hugged his cane close.

* * *

“Newt, for fuck’s sake, stop that.”

Without a pause, Newton spun around, walking back to the pair of couches at the corner of the waiting hall. “I can’t! They won’t let me in!”

Tendo let out a deep growl, pressing few more keys on his laptop before turning to properly look at the other man whose constant mumbles and restless pacing had driven away everyone else in the lobby. Newton was a mess, his shirt hanging from his frame by the sleeves only, the buttons already undone. He was muttering under his breath, and the way he sometimes tilted his head back and let out a frustrated howl was not reassuring at all. A young intern, aspiring to be a nurse, was the only officer who had stopped by during the two hours they’d been at the hospital wing. However, he too had made a hasty retreat after Newton had practically jumped onto him, bombing the poor man with endless mass of questions and, at the end, threats when it came apparent that they’d not be allowed to enter the treatment room before the head doctor gave them all clear. Newton did not take it well, but no matter how hard he demanded, the doors to the infirmary remained closed.

“Dude, did you even hear what that guy said earlier? ‘Only family members are allowed to the main hallway.’ What the hell is that shit?”

Slapping his laptop closed completely, Tendo leaned back against the undeniably uncomfortable cushions of the medbay sofa. “I believe he meant that you’d have to be a member of Hermann’s family in order to get in.”

His sarcasm was wasted on Newton though, the man too upset to notice the teasing tone. “Yeah, but come on, I am basically Hermann’s next of kin! We come here together all the time!”

Doing his best to cover his amazement, Tendo glanced at the other man who had once more began strolling across the empty waiting room. “Well sure, but it is not official, right? You’d have to sign papers for this sort of thing, y’know. Fill in proper forms, stuff like that.” Taking a grip of Newton’s flailing arm, Tendo tugged him onto the couch beside him. “And stay still for one goddamn minute, will ya? You stressing over it won’t do Hermann any good.”

A heavy exhale came from Newton when he hit the couch, a quavering hand ran through his already messy heap of hair. His glasses were skewed as well, but Tendo made a smart decision to keep that knowledge to himself.

Newton shook his head fiercely before offering a lopsided smirk to the man beside him. “Sorry dude. I’m being a total twat right now, and that’s not fair to you.” His leer widened, becoming more worrisome without him meaning it to.

Tendo recognized this expression well. The look in Newton’s eyes was one of his manic glares. When he looked down, he could see the way Newton was bouncing his left leg, a telltale clue of his approaching burst of uncontrolled energy. Tendo knew the effects it would take if they’d yet have to wait in the lobby much longer, had seen what Newton could do when he’d get like this without a fitting way to let out some of his steam. A small distraction would be an ideal way to steer Newton’s attention elsewhere, even if only for a few moments, but the waiting room of a infirmary was not exactly a place filled with many stimulating pastimes.

Slowly, his eyes set onto the closed laptop.

He pushed the stiff lid open again, glancing at his side with what he hoped to pass as an encouraging grin. If it fell upon him to keep Newton in a fixed state of mind, he might as well get some actual work done while he was at it. And most importantly, it would hopefully prevent Newton from assaulting an another unfortunate nurse happening to pass by.

His posture was tense as hell, but his voice came out lightly as he spoke out, “Hey, since we’ve got time to kill anyway, how about we go through the process of sorting out the lab now? Would save me a great deal of trouble afterwards.”

Newton’s darting eyes met his, a sparkle of interest shining through even if the left leg kept on its own pace. “Sorting out?”

Tendo nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got to make a list of all the stuff you guys have in there so we know what to replace when the disinfection group is done.” He hit few buttons and opened a new tab to the top row. “First, can you tell me what large machinery you have down there? We can work out the smaller equipment later.”

The next fifteen minutes passed in relatively peaceful signs. They went over the main parts of devices in the lab, Newton pointing out most expensive ones so that Tendo knew to mark them with a separate star for the budget meeting. Some of the expenses would be covered by the insurance, but the Marshall had made it clear how little faith he had for the whole sum to be compensated. Newton was disappointed when he was told how unlikely it was for many of his equipments to be usable after the cleaning staff was done with them.

Despite the adrenaline still pumping in his veins, Newton was starting to calm down at last. Tendo threw him a quick glance, his fingers continuing their dance on the keyboard, the steady ring of sound comforting in the silent room.

A sudden thought popped into his head when he watched Newton yawn. He perhaps should have asked about it a bit earlier. “Um, Newt? That tank filled with green acid-looking stuff on your workbench, the one you always tamper with whenever I come to the lab. How valuable is it, really?”

Newton’s wandering gaze snapped back to him. “That’s my only sample of a kaiju intestinal! It’s pretty much irreplaceable.”

More taps of the keyboard. “... Aah. Well then, I am very sorry for your lost.”

Against his expectations, there was no groan of utter sorrow. Not even a slight huff of breath suggesting how much Newton usually cared about his experiments being meddled with. He just sat silently, a hand curled into a fist pressed against his lips.

Sensing the tension, Tendo cleared his throat. “Uh, you okay buddy?” he asked, carefully closing the laptop and setting it on the sofa cushion. He had a feeling it would offer little help at this point.

The green eyes blinked rapidly, making a quick sweep over the room before landing to the double doors leading to the main area of the infirmary. “Yeah, I just -”

Following the gaze, Tendo found himself shifting over on his seat, tossing an arm over Newton’s strained shoulders. “It doesn’t seem so important anymore, huh?”

A voiceless nod was the only answer he got.

They were both startled out from their thoughts when one of the doors creaked open. The sound alone was enough to bounce Newton to his feet, a disheveled hair sticking up in every possible direction as he nailed his eyes to the doctor standing in the doorway.

Her face revealed nothing, and after taking a quick look at the two residents of the lobby, she glanced down to her papers before asking out, “Doctor Newton Geiszler?”

“That’s me!” Newton exclaimed, hands swinging openly at his sides. “I’m Newton.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I am the leading doctor Karen Neilson.” She looked at Tendo momentarily, a questioning gleam in her eyes. “I’m here to take you to the main hallway. I can’t let you in the same room with the patient until we are sure he is not contagious, but there is a row of chairs in the corridor. You can wait there if you’d prefer.”

Already walking forwards to the door, Newton pulled his shirt on properly, even buttoning it all the way up. “So, is Hermann there already? Do you know what’s going on with him?” he asked, pushing past the doctor to get into the hallway behind her. He was rubbing his hands together, a nervous tilt raising his voice. “Is he okay?”

Neilson took another look at her documents. “The paramedics are bringing him in as we speak. According to their initial evaluation, doctor Gottlieb is in stable condition.” She stepped aside to allow Newton to pass, flashing a unsure glare towards Tendo, silently asking him if he wished to follow.  

Tendo stood up and snatched his laptop from the cushion. He nodded quietly to the doctor when he came over, setting to the step next to her. Tendo didn’t have any official rights to accompany Newton in here, per se, but the Marshall had gave him plain instructions before he had raced after Newt from the LOCCENT: keep doctor Geiszler under control. So following Newton around until the situation was solved was to be his ungrateful work assignment for the near future. Nevertheless, doctor Neilson didn’t appear too bothered by him, so he let it slide from his mind. If anyone objected, they could always take their business to the Marshall.

The three of them walked along the blandy painted hallway in a brisk fashion, Newton half-jogging in front of two others but remaining close enough to hear if the doctor called out to him. She did so once, and only to inform him that they’d take the next turn to the left. It led them to a wider part of the medbay, the cramped corridor opening up into a room similar to the waiting room they’d occupied earlier, but with one distinct difference: this one had a large window planted on one of the pale walls. It showed them an airtight room filled with machines and computer screen, most of them completely unknown to both Newton and Tendo.

Doctor Neilson stepped forwards, gesturing them to take a seat on the cushioned bench running alongside of the wall opposite to the window. “You may wait here. Doctor Gottlieb should be brought in shortly.”

Tendo sat down right away, but Newton remained on his feet, looking inside the examination room. “Is that a... quarantine zone?”

“Yes, at the moment,” Neilson said, frowning a little. “It’s a space we use with patients who are forbidden to interact with outside world due to the unknown nature of their sickness.”

Newton nodded, his attention still in the room. “So I won’t be able to speak with Hermann?”

A gentler look of understanding spread across Neilson’s face, and her tone was softer when she answered, “No, not at first. However, there is a fairly strong chance the infection doctor Gottlieb has is not contagious, and after it’s confirmed, the quarantine will be lifted.”

Tendo watched as Newton nodded again, the man so entangled in his thoughts that Tendo seriously doubted he’d actually heard a word the doctor had said. But that’s why the Marshall had sent them both here. So at least one of them would be capable of briefing the head of Shatterdome of the latest developments when he’d eventually call and ask.

Doctor Neilson glanced at them once more before correcting her glasses and taking a step towards the door. “I’ll leave you gentlemen here, feel free to stay as long as you’d like. This area is not strictly under the medbay’s rule sets, so electronics are allowed.” She aimed a pointed look at the laptop resting safely under Tendo’s arm. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and prepare for the patient’s arrival.”

When the door slid shut behind her, Newton released the breath he hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding in and sat next to Tendo. Immediately his leg started to twitch and he brought one of his hand up to his mouth. His fingernail would be nothing but a memory by the time this was over.

And yet, Tendo couldn’t find it within himself to tell him to stop.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the missed week, I had a thing going on and I messed up my schedule.

The constant jostling of the stretcher made it impossible for Hermann to remain relaxed on top of it. The paramedics who had been assigned the duty to carry him were a pair of strong professionals, no doubt, but even for them carrying a man with possibly lethal infection through more than a little spacious building like Shatterdome was an ordeal. Fortunately the alarm had emptied all of the hallway completely, so at least they didn’t have to try and outmaneuver a crowd of employees who usually packed the corridor during this time of day.

Judging from the amount of talking the main medic was doing, Hermann gathered that they were fairly close to the medbay by now. The walkie talkie hummed silently as commands came over the line, but in his state of disorientation, Hermann couldn’t bring himself to care too much what had been said. He was sure he’d find out sooner than later, whatever the liked it or not. His cane, a trusty piece of wood he’d had since he was a teen, was clutched tightly against his chest. It felt comforting, to have it nearby.

After all, it was the cane he and his mother chose together once the diagnosis had been given. Mother had brought it all the way to the hospital, alongside of a dozen or more options for him to choose from. He’d been practically bound to the hospital bed back then, and it had taken more than few months for him to be able to actually try them out, but the moment his hand curled around the handle, he had known which one he would choose. The sound of his mother’s pleased praise had lured the first real smile out of him since his struggle began.

A strangled gasp forced its way up from his throat when an abrupt dip of the stretcher snapped him back to the present. The hallway around them was now lighted by white fluorescent lamps, the brightness of them strong enough for Hermann to shut his eyes again. He could hear the steady thumping of the medics’ boots hitting the metal floor and the incoherent babble coming from the walkie talkie somewhere left of him.

Just as he was about to attempt to change his position slightly, to try and roll away from his injured side, a brisk voice cut in halfway, causing him to carefully open one of his eyes.

The head-medic was staring at him, her face (or what was visible of it behind the gasmask) being blank. She took a hold of his hand, loosening its grip from the cane. “Doctor Gottlieb, we’re almost at the infirmary. When in there, doctor Karen Neilson will begin the research. Do you understand me?”

Hermann managed a stiff nod, clenching his teeth together when a new jolt send a spear of pain through his spine.

The medic’s hold of his hand tightened momentarily before releasing. “Excellent. Now, Parker and Lin, we have orders from the Marshall to make sure the lab is secured before the cleaning staff can enter. Once we’d delivered doctor Gottlieb to the quarantine area, we move back to the K-science wing.” The whole group roared an affirmation. Hermann remained silent, his body spasming quietly as they closed the distance between them and the medbay.

Suddenly, a sense of suffocation made him sit upwards, almost knocking the whole stretcher off balance with the force of his movement. A fit of coughs overcame him, and a flair of dread settled in the pit of his stomach when he felt the muscles surrounding his throat convulse beneath his fingers. Inside his skin, his artery pulsed visibly, sending a painful wave of tremors all over his body. The sensation of veins squirming between his fingertips made him double over with a surge of revulsion.

“Doctor, what’s wrong?” The pace of the group stretcher had slowed down, but Hermann wouldn’t notice. He had his eyes screwed shut, a shaking set of fingers pressed to his throat as he hacked up splatters of blood. The once clean white fabric under him was soon spotted with small pools of red.

“We have to get him to the medbay. Immediately!”

Hermann couldn’t speak. It didn’t even occur to him to try. The amount of blood in his mouth made it impossible for him to think of anything else. When he dared to part his lips, the scent of copper assaulted his nose before he soiled his sweater vest by gagging the mixture of blood and saliva.

The cracking sound of a walkie talkie was almost covered by the clattering of the medic’s boots as they ran started to move once more.

Head-medic’s voice raised over the chaos, her voice brim with sealed concern.

“Dr. Neilson, we’re bringing him in!”

* * *

 

“They’re bringing him in!”

Newton’s cry was loud enough to pull Tendo out of his thin slumber, but before he was able to get on his feet, Newton was already pressed against the window opening up to the quarantine room behind the wall. As he’d said, a group of paramedics was rushing through the door at the further end of the closed space, a stretcher being carried inside between two of them. On it, a motionless shape of a man was lying face-up.

“They got him out.” Newton’s widened eyes followed along as the two medics lifted Hermann off from the litter and settled him down on a sterile hospital bed, the only real piece of furniture in otherwise ascetic room (Newton refused to count the tiny wooden stool as one). Under his gaze, doctor Neilson came in, glancing at the window briefly, but moving all the while towards the bed where Hermann was now starting to show signs of life. His body, or the little part of it which Newton could see, was convulsing violently, the former state of immobility forgotten completely.

“Damn. He doesn’t look too hot.” Newton was startled when Tendo spoke out so close from his left, the technician having managed to stand up and move to the window as well. They watched together, Newton swallowing constantly when more and more staff ran in and out of the room, voices speaking rapidly but too muffled for them to hear. New machines were brought in, and with them a bottle after bottle of brightly colored liquids which Newton assumed to be different variants of antidotes. He recognized some of them, having used them himself in lab in few occasions, but unlike then, they made his stomach squirm. Now the bottles were here for Hermann, not for his experiments.

Behind the glass, doctor Neilson was stepping forward, her face covered by a mask. The paramedics had already left the room, and with their absent, a new group of people had come. Most of them seemed to be nurses and other certified doctors, all of them wearing a basic model of the nose-and-mouth covering mask. The equipment was moved closer to the bed by one of them, and doctor Neilson leaned over to talk to Hermann, a clipboard in her hand.

“Wonder what she’ll start with,” Tendo said quietly. “Sure hope they sort it out fast. There’s too much twitching going on to my liking.”

When Newton turned to look, doctor Neilson had stepped back and was waving at the two other medics to come closer as she backed off. A lump of ache climbed up in Newton’s chest when he watched how Hermann’s frail body gave a vehement jolt, and the sudden shift was strong enough to push one of the trolleys carrying the machinery away from the bed. His bad leg was hanging off from the edge of the mattress, unresponsive and limp.

“Do you think they know how to handle this?” Newton asked, voice low. It wasn’t like he didn’t trust the personnel in Shatterdome. Of course he did. But he had seen how heavily the budget cuts had hit the unit, and well... He knew first-hand how much it could affect department’s ability to do their job.

Picking up on his worried tone, Tendo spared him a short glance before answering with a half-shrug. “Does anyone know? This is a whole new can of worms, Newt. But I doubt they’re just gonna let him roll over and die in there.” He gave a brief smile and lifted his hand to pat Newton’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay, mate. That man is far too stubborn to simply give up and drop dead.”

In his mind, Newton knew Tendo was right. Hermann was nothing if not determined, and Newton had learned that in a hard way during their years of sharing a lab. Their arguments, constant bickering and stressful working environment all had made it certain that only those with superior sense of perseverance would stay. Hermann would not be taken down by a mere infection, no matter how alien it was in nature. He’d make it through, if only to prove everyone else he could.

An unexpected cry of panic snapped both of their attention back to the room.

Beside the bed, one of the medics was trying to aim a needle in the spasming muscles of Hermann’s neck. But Hermann had his eyes opened wide, and when the medic took a hold of his arm, he jerked back so swiftly that the man lost his grip. “Was ist los? Wer bist du?”* His voice was breaking with heaved breath. Newton hated the note of fear in it. “Wo ist meine Mutter?”

A frown appeared on doctor Neilson’s face, and she quickly glanced at her colleagues before leaning to Hermann. He didn’t meet her questioning gaze, instead opting to twist his body away from hers.

Her movements slow and obvious, the doctor reached forward, intending to lay it calmly on Hermann’s upper arm. She failed to take a hold of him, and her voice rose to the point where Newton was able to hear her through the glass as well as he could hear Hermann.

“Doctor Gottlieb, you are in medbay. I am doctor Neilson, and we are going to -”

“Kein Halt!” With an alarmed shout, Hermann scrambled backwards, his back pressing firmly against the headboard of the bed. “Geh weg!”

“Doctor Gottlieb, can you understand what I am saying to you?”

Hermann was now visibly shaking, but the terror in his eyes was turning into something else. From behind the window, Newton could see the change running through Hermann. He had seen it before, all those times when they were unlucky enough to wander into the gym when there was a new patch of rangers coming from the ship-deck. Hermann would puff up, in a manner of speaking, and stand up so straight that Newton had actually worried what it might do to his leg and hip in a long run. But the most notable change always happened to his eyes; they’d harden over, gain a tilt of barely concealed aggression which lurked just beneath the surface. It was unsettling to witness, even for Newton who had seen it happen multiple times in the past.

Evidently, Neilson noticed the shift as well. Her body-language changed at once. “Jordan, get me 15 milliliters of XC-56, the red-labeled bottle on the cart. Bairamov, there is a pair of security cuffs in the lower locker. We need them at once.”

Just as she got the words out, Hermann let out a harsh snarl and surged forward, surprising all people in the room. His right arm lifted off from the mattress and with a move much faster than anything Newton had ever seen from him before, he snatched a hold of one of the nurses and dragged her off from her feet and onto the bed. When the young woman was attempting to regain her balance, Hermann struck down hard, slamming his closed fist into the back of her head. Her unconscious body fell limp on the bedding.

Neilson was already on the move, taking a firm grip of Hermann’s arm. On the other side of the bed, two medics reached forward at the same time, both grasping the upper part of the right arm. “We need the sedative _now_! Get the cuffs ready, secure them to the railings!” She barely managed to avoid getting hit as Hermann lashed upwards, his nails missing her forehead by few inches. “Someone go get the ECMO! Set it up and stand by!”

Over the screams coming from the room, Newton heard his own heart’s beat as if it was clawing its way out through his ribcage. Hermann was crying, he could see the traces of tears running down his face, blending in with the muddle of blood still smudged under his nose. And when he saw how one of the nurses squeezed his fingers around Hermann’s bad leg, seeking to attach it to the metal poles on the bed, he felt sick to his stomach.

“They’re hurting him!” He pushed Tendo’s hand aside and slammed his own against the window with such a force that the glass shuddered in place. “I need to get in there! He’s just scared, he doesn’t understand what’s going on!”

“Whoa, easy there!” Staying in a safe radius from Newton’s flailing arms, Tendo shifted beside him. “No need to bust down the whole window. I feel ya, I really do, but there is no way you’re going into that room right now, Newt. They’re professionals. They can deal with it.”

“It’s not them I am worried about, Choi!”

“I know, but you are still not going in.”

A hollow heave of a breath shook Newton’s body as he gave in. He watched, silently and with heavy heart, how the medics spread Hermann’s limbs and fastened them into the railings, effectively nailing him down to the bed. It must have hurt, the way it forced Hermann’s body to stretch out. The scream of rage followed soon after the nurses and doctors backed off, and Newton couldn’t rip his eyes off from the trashing figure on the cot. It burned a mark into him, more intensely than he had imagined, to see how his friend wrenched his trembling arms to his chest, a piercing string of cries cutting deep into Newton’s brain. He was sure he’d never forget the sight. No matter how badly he wished he could.

He was about to turn away, unwilling to see more when he knew he couldn’t do anything to help, when a wrecked sob wafted through the unyielding glass.

“Ich will meine Liebe! Wo ist er?”

Newton couldn't look after that.

* * *

_"Come on, Hermann! It’s a physical, what’s the big deal?”_

_He had to quickly duck down when a tablet-sized blackboard was hurled towards him, and the crushing sound following its fall echoed in the room made of metal. It was a miracle it didn’t push anything off from the desktops, and Newton wasn’t hesitant to let his feelings being known. “And watch out where you toss your crap! You almost smashed my mass spectrometer with that!”_

_Across the lab, Hermann was giving him a stink-eye, his grip on the cane so fierce that he was actually shaking slightly on his feet. Nothing new in that, per se, but somehow this seemed for a bit of an overreaction, even from Hermann. Sure, nobody liked to get poked at by the doctors, or donating packs of blood every month, but usually Hermann was prone to at least act politely and comply. He was not happy about it, not one bit, but he went through with it. Newton himself had seen it multiple times, given how they were typically summoned to the tests at the same time since the medics went over the lists according to the departments, and he and Hermann were the only ones left in theirs._

_“The deal is, doctor Geiszler, that I do not have time to play dress-up with some barely out of school nurse intern when the end of the whole world is looming behind the corner!” Hermann’s face was turning into a worrying shade of red, and Newton was pretty sure he heard the wooden end of Hermann’s cane give out a silent crack as the fingers around it tightened. “They have my records, I don’t see any reason for me to go over there again!”_

_“Jesus Christ, man! Why you have to make such a shown out of every little thing? You’ve got to go and renew the medical records every now and then, that’s the fucking point of the whole system! To make sure nothing has changed since the last one!” Newton knew he was taking this too far, but he rarely knew how to stop in time. This one was not an exception to the rule. “And with how your leg has been acting up lately, it’s about damn time you go and get it checked out!”_

_He regret it immediately._

_The temperature in the lab seemed to drop by several degrees. The silence that had fallen was deafening, and without Newton’s attempt to speak up again, it went on what felt like eternity. But worst of all was the look on Hermann’s face when he finally lifted his gaze from the floor. His eyes began to shut down, the bitter expression molting and fixing into a blank mask of indifference as he took a step back, coming to rest against the workbench. The wide mouth was pressed in a thin line, and the tension that was always present at his shoulders grew tenfold._

_When he spoke, a trail of cold sweat ran down Newton’s spine. “Well, in that case, perhaps I should take my useless piece of a limb to the infirmary then. That is, if you truly think it would make such a difference, doctor Geiszler.”_

_“Hermann, come on, you know that’s not what I -”_

_“I know perfectly well what you meant!” Hermann screamed, hitting the bottom of his cane against the floor. “You meant the same thing everyone else does! What everyone always sees when I walk by!”_

_With a swift move, Newton crossed the room and came to stop in front of Hermann. Now refusing to meet his gaze, Hermann was turning away from him, the corners of his mouth arched downwards._

_Newton leaned in slightly, but maintained a comfortable level of distance between them. He knew not to get too close. “I’m sorry, dude. It’s just that sometimes I get worried, y’know? And you don’t normally make such a fuss about these things...”_

_“Did it ever occur to you that there might be some variables you’re not made aware of?”_

_The sound of Hermann’s voice carried a note of wariness. Newton frowned at that. “Like what?”_

_Hermann remained quiet. He was swaying a bit, unsteady on his feet._

_When he got no answer, Newton went on on his own, running a hand over his head when he muttered out loud, “I mean we’ve done this like million times already. They set these check-ups up every other month, and we just go and -”_

_And then it hit him._

_“We always go together.”_

_He looked up just in time to see how a wave of blush creeped on Hermann’s cheeks. The man was practically squirming in place, eyes darting to everywhere except to Newton. “That’s it, right? You don’t wanna go alone.”_

_A strangled attempt of an answer came out of Hermann and Newton found it borderline endearing how his lab partner switched his weight to more heavily on his cane, the blush on his face deepening._

_“But Herms, if it’s just that, then we’re golden! I just reschedule my appointment and we go at the same day,” Newton said, smiling widely. “Would do me some good too. Last time I forgot to enter the paperwork we were supposed to fill while waiting.”_

_Hermann huffed. “Yes, I remember. I had to write it all down for you.”_

_“See? Everybody wins.” Pulling his phone from his jean’s pocket, Newton started to dial. “I’ll make few calls and get it all set up for us. No biggie.” He set the now humming cell on his ear, winking at Hermann as he stepped away from the noisy machinery of the lab for the call._

_The little smile on Hermann’s lips warmed his heart throughout the rest of the day._

* * *

The smell in doctor Neilson’s office was a stale one. Had it been even slightly larger in size, Newton might have let it slide, but really, how hard was it to keep a room this small in a livable condition? The air was swirling with a pathetic help of a ventilation, but nonetheless managed to maintain a musty odor more suitable for a field medical tent than an actual office meant for the leading doctor of Shatterdome. It didn’t help that the only window in the whole space offered a depressing view to the waiting hall across the corridor. Newton’s eyes strayed to a powered-down laptop left on the low table, a parting-gift from Tendo who had taken his leave as soon as another visitor had entered through the double doors.

That visitor was now staring at Newton over the desk with a stern look, fingers folded neatly in front of him.

“I suppose it would be a waste of time to ask you to take a seat, doctor Geiszler,” Pentecost said, gesturing to the empty chair opposite to the desk. And it sure would be, in any other state of time and space, but right now Newton couldn’t find it within himself to argue with the Marshall. Instead he collapsed to the soft leather bench and lifted his bloodshot eyes to meet his commanding officer’s concerned gaze.

“If I understand the situation correctly, I take it that doctor Gottlieb has been successfully contained?”

Newton’s head snapped up. “ _Contained_? He’s been cuffed down like some fucking feral animal!” The pitch of his voice climbed up and already he knew he was stepping over a line here. He didn’t care. “Hermann’s the victim here, and they’re all acting like he’s gonna chew their heads off given a chance!”

The way Pentecost glared at him changed, a hint of iron seeping into it. “He attacked a member of our medical team. The cuffs are purely an additional precaution -”

“Like hell they are!” He hadn’t noticed when exactly he’d plunged up to his feet, but it made it far more easier for him to start pacing in the cramped office. “He’s not in a steady state of mind, it’s not okay to punish him for something he had no intention of doing in the first place!”

“And yet it doesn’t change the fact that he did so regardless.” Pentecost was standing up as well, placing his hands on the desktop for support. “You said it yourself, doctor Gottlieb is _not_ in his right mind, and therefore we have to take on measures we wouldn’t normally have to implement!”

“But you’re locking him down just as if he’s responsible for this. Like it’s his own fault he got infected!” Newton stalked forwards and put his own shaking palm on the table, pressing it against the smooth wood. “Those doctors were practically wrestling him to the bed back there. A lanky man with already existing spinal - and leg injuries!”

“They didn’t have much of a choice, and you know that as well as I do, doctor!”

The yelling went on and on, until eventually both men were out of breath but still staring at each other over the littered desktop. For several minutes, after the brawl had cooled off, the only other sound besides their labored heaving was a silent ticking of a clock on the wall. It was obvious that the evening had already began to turn into a proper night. The lamps had dimmed in the waiting room, and soon the only source of light would  be the thin string of emergency lights running down at the baseboards. Nurses and doctors had mostly cleared from the medical wing, leaving behind only a few groups of medics who were seated comfortable at the service booth.

At one point of the argument, Newton had slumped back down on his chair, his hair mussed up and glasses at skew. It did little to repress his anxious mind though. His eyelids were drooping, but inside him a current of adrenaline was still raving wild. It manifested itself as a nervous tic, the foot of his left leg bouncing up and down with such a pace that it was beginning to ache. He ignored it. It was a minor inconvenience, nothing more. What was important right now was getting his thoughts through to the Marshall.

“Sir.” It sounded wrong in his mouth, but despite what Hermann might say, every now and then Newton would admit it was time to back down a bit. “Seriously, I know what a mess this whole thing is, but if you’d just listen to me for a sec -”

“Newt.” The sudden use of his nickname cut Newton off before he got to the end of his sentence. Pentecost was rubbing the bridge of his nose, but his eyes were locked to the man sitting across from him. “You mean well, don’t think I can’t see that. However, your personal relationship with doctor Gottlieb is blurring your view of the full picture, and as a result, you are not thinking rationally. None of us wishes to cause any more harm on Gottlieb’s person, but given how things have turned out in the last 12 hours, we have to take into consideration all the possible threats presented to us.”

Newton kept his mouth shut, but didn’t avert his eyes when the older man stared at him. Seeing this, the Marshall nodded lightly before going on, “That said, if you have any information you could provide to us which might help to explain your colleague's strange behavior earlier today, I’d appreciate it greatly.”

After a moment of silence, Newton spoke up, his voice lowered but still tinted with a tinge of resolve. “So you’re asking me why Hermann went all psycho when the nurse was trying to get him sedated?”

The Marshall raised his eyebrows but was remaining otherwise silent. It spurred Newton to go on, and followed by a small pause, he mumbled out, “Hermann... doesn’t really have the best memories in regards to doctors, I think.”

Pentecost nodded. “Understandable, given how he has no doubt been forced to spent a significant amount of time with them in his youth.”

“Yeah, but I think there’s more than that.” Newton leaned back on his seat, tracing his gaze up to the low-hanging roof of the room. “We have gone to several medical checks together, and he never had a problem back then. He was uneasy, sure, but not violent.”

“Perhaps it is the infection. It may well be amplifying those emotions,” Pentecost suggested quietly.

Newton shook his head, eyes still on the ceiling. “It might, but there has to be other variables here. Something we hadn’t figured out yet...”

Their musing came to an abrupt end when the door behind them slipped open, and doctor Neilson stepped inside her own office.

“Doctor Geiszler.” She wasn’t smiling, but there was a spark of relief in her eyes. “You can come and see him now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations to the German parts of the dialog:
> 
> Was ist los? = What's happening?  
> Wer bist du? = Who are you?  
> Wo ist meine Mutter? = Where is my mother?  
> Kein Halt! =No, stop!  
> Geh weg! = Go away!  
> Ich will meine Liebe! = I want my love!  
> Wo ist er? = Where is he?


	5. Chapter 5

The doorknob beneath his fingers was slick with sweat. Newton hated the feeling.

He’d been standing outside Hermann’s medbay room for several minutes now, watching nurses rush by and other employees hurrying in and out of the numerous examination spaces alongside the far end of the corridor. One of them was the nurse Hermann had... attacked, but judging by the way she was walking briskly across the halls, she hadn’t suffered any major injuries from the encounter. It was a relief, a minor one but better than nothing. The ceiling lights were still turned off and if he looked closely enough, he could see that the digital clock on the wall was displaying time far beyond midnight. Newton lifted his free hand to carefully press it over his stinging eyes, a sense of exhaustion overtaking him for a moment. After the incident, he had barely allowed himself to relax, and it was beginning to show. His eyes were turning red around the edges, and at the corners of his vision he could see clouds of blurry shapes moving back and forth. And yet, once he’d heard he could go and see Hermann, all thoughts about sleep had vanished as he had jumped to his feet and followed doctor Neilson back to the emergency wing. 

They’d had time to discuss during the walk.

* * *

_ "So, what you’re saying is Hermann’s got an ‘all clear’ signal already?” _

_ The look on Dr. Neilson’s face had been slightly amused, but her tone was even and serious when she answered. “Certainly not, doctor Geiszler. We have simply managed to confirm that he isn’t contagious, and therefore it’s safe to let you see him this early on. After all, you work in same field as he does.” _

_ During his time in academic world, Newton had developed a knack of detecting when people wanted something from him, and how they usually went about it. This checked every little sign in his books, and being as tired as he was, he’d decided to cut the chase short. _

_ “Spill it out, doc. What do you expect me to do?” _

_ Newton had enjoyed the taken back look on her face immensely, patting his own back for guessing right. There was something they’d ask of him, and the leading doctor was desperately trying to get on her gears after being thrown off by Newton’s accurate quip. _

_ “Well, now that you mentioned it...” Her mildly apologetic smile had appeased Newton a bit. “We were hoping you’d be willing to lend your talents to us in regards of kaiju science.” _

_ “I kinda figured that out already.” _

_ “We haven’t been able to determinate any reasons for doctor Gottlieb’s behavior, apart from it being a result of the infection. And since you are a leading figure of that particular branch of expertise...” _

_ “You want be to figure it out for you.”  _

_ Normally, he’d been more than happy to. Having a chance to study a completely new phenomenon concerning kaiju was a gift from the gods for guy like Newton, but right now, he wasn’t feeling it. Except... _

_ “Will it help Hermann?” _

_ Neilson had glanced down at that. “Not necessarily. We already have a plan in action for him. Test result just came in before I picked you up, and we’ve began to treat him based of them.” _

_ “How?” He was being curt, but then again, he had a bad habit of becoming snappish the more weary he was.  _

_ Doctor Neilson didn’t seem to mind though, she merely waved her hand in the air as if brushing away Newton’s demanding tone. “We ran multiple tests on him, and the paramedics took samples of his blood before he was brought in. There were some... anomalies. His testosterone and serotonin levels are rising, and we found some substances in his circulatory which none of our team could recognize. ” _

_ It never promised anything good when a doctor openly admitted of not knowing something. “Meaning what? Hermann’s got kaiju genes in his blood system now?” Newton had noticed how much he had been fidgeting, and determinedly pushed his hands into his pockets. It always made him uneasy when there was a problem at hand which he couldn’t resolve, and this one was steadily climbing its way to the top of his mental list. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, flush them out somehow?” _

_ “As the matter of fact, we are in process of doing just that.” A gentle hand had tapped his shoulder, before she continued, “We have set up a machine which circulates doctor Gottlieb’s blood through the cleansing mechanism and adds doses of painkillers and antibiotics in it as well. However, because of the unknown nature of the disease, I can’t be sure if they have the effect we are going for. But so far, it seems to be working as intended.” _

_ She fell silent for a while, then adding with a hushed voice. “Your research of kaiju is not the main reason I’m about allow you into his room.” _

_ Their talk had led them all the way to Hermann’s temporary accommodation, and when Newton attempted to take his first look through the same window he’d been staring before, he noticed how a thick piece of curtain had been pulled over the glass.  _

_ Unnerving, really. _

_ “I’m sure you saw how your friend acted when we were trying to calm him down.” _

_ He had. And he could still feel the ice-cold anger swirling inside his chest when he remembered the way they’d manhandled Hermann into the bed. Something must have shown in his eyes, because a flash of worry dashed over Neilson’s face and she seemed even more regretful than earlier. Nevertheless, Newton didn’t go on on the topic. He had already said his part to the Marshall, and the man would no doubt convey Newt’s regards to the medical team at some point, if only to soften the blow in case Newton would decide to do so himself.  _

_ “I hope you can see why we had to go that far.”  _

_ Newton had turned towards her, sighing while rubbing his temples. “Yeah, Pentecost gave me the speech just now. I get it, doesn’t mean I’m gonna agree with it though.”  _

_ “Fair enough.” Neilson’s expression had changed, her eyes darting to the closed door and then back to Newton. “The other reason as to why you are allowed in here, is for you to act as... Let’s say peacekeeper between doctor Gottlieb and my medical staff.” _

_ Newton had rolled his eyes when he’d heard that. “You still think he’s just going to go full Hulk on all of us, huh?” _

_ “Not exactly, no. But it has become apparent how great of an affect your presence have to doctor Gottlieb. Not to mention, it would be far more easier for you to collect data for your research if you’d allowed to be near him during the process.” _

_ It had made sense, and when offered a chance to finally talk to Hermann for the first time after his collapse, Newton hadn’t been too eager to argue. “If I accept, do I have any say on how you guys should act around him?” The spike of ire was burning still, and if he’d be able to prevent any further discomfort aimed at Hermann, he would agree immediately. “Like can I ask your staff to leave if I feel like it might be too much for Hermann?” _

_ It had been clear to him that his suggestion was not well received, but he knew he had the upper hand here. If they wanted his help, they’d have to give in. He counted on it. _

_ The heavy sigh had confirmed his answer before Neilson even spoke up. “If it is to prevent a possible collision between Dr. Gottlieb and my nurses, I can’t say I mind too much.” _

_ She had left after that, leaving Newton to stand alone behind the door, the only barrier separating him from Hermann. He had wrapped his fingers over the knob, and stopped there. _

* * *

For fuck’s sake, he had hyperventilated long enough! Inhaling deeply, Newton puffed up his chest, swept his sweaty hand through his hair, and finally twisted the handle.

The room itself was nothing to write home about. From what he had seen through the glass a while before, it really was just a small hospital room with blank, white walls, lots of medical equipment and an ashen-faced figure lying limp on the narrow bed, hands and feet attached to the metal railings on both sides. As Newton slipped over the threshold completely and pushed the door closed behind him, his eyes traveled across Hermann’s whole body, looking for signs indicating that the man had noticed him coming in. It didn’t seem like it, the thin chest was rising and falling steadily, and even though the nurses had done their best at cleaning up  the blood under his nose, there were still traces of it left around his upper lip.

The suffocating feeling came rushing back, and Newton had to take another deep breath when he started to walk over to the bed. There was a padded chair next to it and he sat down gratefully, the slight tingling in his legs easing up a bit now that he got his weight off from his numb legs. To his surprise, a fine sound of a radio could be heard once he was inside the room, and soon his eyes spotted the tiny device sitting on a desk in a far corner. The melody reminded him of something he had listened to perhaps years ago. The notes of it were lifting softy and then floating down, forming a string of harmony that was barely loud enough to cover the rough rasping of the machines surrounding Hermann. It was nothing like his usual taste of music, but calming and relaxing tune regardless. And after a day like this, he preferred the soothing sense it offered.

However, the music was not able to hide the high-pitched shriek of startlement Newton let out when five strong fingers locked themselves around his wrist with a vicious hold. Without him noticing, Hermann had opened his eyes.

Newton nearly fell off from his chair. His first instinct was to try and pull his hand away from the bed, his brain coming to a halt and preventing him from thinking straight. The touch had come as a complete surprise, and thus every bone in his body was telling him to jerk back to safety. But once he caught the look in the brown eyes nailed to his, he stopped to his tracks.

Hermann looked... baffled. The previous state of panic had faded, thankfully, but there was still tinge of fear swimming in his eyes. It made Newton’s chest curl up tight. The Hermann he had come to know over the years was never confused, and if he ever had been truly terrified, he’d managed to hide it beneath the layers of professionalism and the stuffy stiff-lipped Englishman act.

“Newton?” the question came out cautiously, as if Hermann was afraid that should this be the case, should it really be Newton sitting beside the bed, acknowledging the fact might cause him to vanish from the spot. Seeing someone he’d come to consider his only true friend like this, locked down on a bed and visibly shaken to his core, was really testing Newton’s self-control. He wanted nothing more than to wipe the look of vulnerability from Hermann’s eyes, and he didn’t know how!

So, he did what he always did when he was unsure with Hermann. He began to bicker.

“Jesus Christ, Hermann!” he exclaimed, flailing his free hand upwards in a wide arc and nearly hitting one of the closest machines as he did. “You scared the living shit out of me! At least cough up or something before you go and grab a dude like that!”

The look of uncertainty was pushed aside, and a shimmer of Hermann’s usual frown took its place. “Newton, please. Must you be so disturbingly loud when you -” Newton never got to hear the end, because right then Hermann took a quick look around him. Then, slowly, his gaze trailed down to his wrist where he was yet to release Newton’s hand. His mouth snapped shut, and for what felt like a hour they merely sat in the silence, both of their eyes locked to the sight.

As anyone might have guessed, Newton was the one to break the spell.

“Those were necessary, you know. I’m going to talk to the Marshall again to have them removed.” He ran one finger over the cuffs, gently touching Hermann’s skin while passing by it. “They’ll be gone by tomorrow, I can promise you that.”

Hermann said nothing, and his eyes remained fixed to the chains. 

The atmosphere in the room was tangible. The ticking of the clock seemed louder than it had when Newton had come in, and when he looked at the radio at the far desk, he was overcome by the sudden urge to go and turn the volume up by several bars. Anything to pierce the smog of tension forming in the shadows.

“You, uhh. You want something? Like I dunno, a glass of water?” Newton asked after a while. Not bothering to wait for an answer, he rose up and walked over to the lone desk where a small jug of water had been left. He filled up one cup and carried it back with care, trying his best not to spill half of it on the way (as he did most of the time with his own drinks). When he offered it to Hermann, the other man hesitated. Again he glanced down at his wrists, but did not raise his head to face Newton after that.

Newton came to close to slapping himself when he realized.

“Oh, right! We could... I mean I can help you with it, just hold up a second.” It was difficult to get close enough to Hermann for him to drink from the cup and yet maintaining a comfortable distance between them. Eventually he settled for half-bend position next to Hermann’s head. Delicately he tilted the paper cup, pressing its edge against Hermann’s lips and then moving it slowly until Hermann’s fingers twitched up as a sign for him to stop. As he took a step away, Newton saw a glimpse of alarm lighting up in Hermann’s eyes when few drops of water went down the wrong way. A fit of coughs followed and during it Hermann struggled to sit up better. The cuffs did not allow such movement.They forcefully kept him down, and a new wave of panic emerged under Newton’s eyes.

“Wow wow, take it easy! I’ve got you.” Before he could think of it for too long, Newton surged forward and slipped his hands under Hermann’s arms, lifting him off from the mattress. He couldn’t get much of an angle, but it was enough for Hermann to catch his breath and regain the control of his lungs. He was swallowing repeatedly when Newton lowered him back to the pillows, but the hacking had ceased. 

A hoarse voice did tell a story though, and Newton was certain more fits like this would arise in near future. “My a-apologies.” He coughed once more, a shallow exhale compared to its predecessors.

“No worries, man” Newton said, trying to summon a tiny smirk on his face. “At least you didn’t choke on it. I don’t think I’m qualified to perform a Heimlich maneuver all on my own.”

He had hoped joking might bring out more of his familiar Hermann, perhaps a nasty jab aimed at his non-existing revival abilities. But nothing came. And as Newton watched how Hermann’s gaze kept on drifting to the cuffs keeping him still, he decided now was as good time as ever to talk about the topic which had hang heavy in the room from the moment Hermann had opened his eyes. After all, Hermann seemed to be more coherent than before, and if there was any chance for them to figure out how this all would play out, he needed to know how it truly had been for Hermann.

So, in low voice and direct gaze, he asked, “Do you remember what happened after the outbreak in the lab?”

His serious tone made Hermann to glance up shortly. The usually sour mouth was pinned to a thin line, but Newton saw the way his fingers shifted and wrapped around the bedsheets. Hermann was squirming in place, but the longer Newton stared at him, the more he was obviously attempting to get himself stay put. It was aching to see how, even in the condition he was in, Hermann seek to keep up his armor of steely exterior. But Newton had seen through the crack by now. And he was not going to buy any half-truths anymore.

“Hermann, what do you remember?”

“Not much.” Not meeting his eyes, Hermann’s thumbs rubbed against the beddings. Paleness on his face gained a faint shade of blush, but Newton’s wasn’t sure if that was because of the subject matter or if the infection was obtaining more ground against the meds. He didn’t have time to ponder about it. Hermann continued to speak, his raspy voice cutting off every now and then. 

“I saw flashes of it. And yet it felt as if I was watching it all unfold from afar. As is it was all happening to someone else.”

Newton nodded. “So, it was kinda like you were just an audience, yeah? Like it was a movie for you to watch?”

“In a way, yes. But I could still sense the... pain and -” he cut off, squeezing his eyes closed. “T-there was something in there. In my mind when it started to dig in deeper...”

Newton’s frowned. “Dig deeper?”

Hermann nodded over and over again in a jerky motions. “I-it wanted to get deeper, but I didn’t want to let it. Until the doctor came. I...  couldn’t hold it back then.” 

Suddenly there was a loud clank, a door being pushed ajar. Hermann’s eyes flew open, and Newton was faced with an unblinking gaze, Hermann’s whole body coiling up. 

“Da ist es wieder!”*

Newton swirled around. A nurse, young man with a blue mask covering parts of his face, was staring at them from the doorway.

Newton shouted.

“Out! Get out right now!”

The nurse, who had barely managed to push his way through the door, had fled immediately. The door itself lapsed closed behind him, shutting out the commotion of the hallway behind its wooden surface. It was somewhat startling, considering Newton had been expecting resistance being thrown to his way. Perhaps dr. Neilson had already told her staff about the arrangement between their division and Newton. That, or the poor man had just been caught completely off guard by Newton’s shrieking voice. Either way, the room was now empty, and after a while of coaxing Hermann had relaxed down onto the mattress. His body was still strained tight, the muscles in his forearms tense and trembling, but the rapid pace of his breathing was calming back to what could be considered normal. 

“You okay, dude?” Newton rushed to lean over the bed and grabbed Hermann’s hand which had taken a death-grip of the railing. He was gasping for air, and under his fingers Newton could feel the way his pulse had jumped up. A trail of tears began to trickle, smearing Hermann’s blushing face in their wake. Newton lifted his other hand, planning on drying them before they’d reach his lips, but Hermann gave a violent jerk with his head, pulling himself away while simultaneously twisting his body closer to Newton’s side of the bed.

He was trying to say something, but a burst of uncontrollable sobs interrupted his words. The fast-paced breathing turned into wet gasps, and witnessing it broke Newton’s heart.

His hold of Hermann’s fingers tightened. The knuckles of his hand were turning white, but he didn’t mind.

“You’re alright! You’ll be just fine, Herms,” he said, clutching harder. 

“We’ll be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Da ist es wieder! = There it is again!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the big delay! I WILL try and post more frequently now, and in the next few chapters we'll hopefully get to the part where the infection itself starts to make more sense.  
> Thank you all for sticking with this story, you have no idea how much your support mean to me.

Newton had left. It couldn’t have been longer than half an hour, but Hermann was beginning to worry he wouldn’t be allowed back inside should he be gone for too long.

No nurses or doctors had showed up since Newton’s outburst yesterday, and Hermann was grateful of that. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel he had himself under control. He couldn’t be certain, but he doubted the medical staff trusted him either. What little he had saw of them through the one glass window in the room, they all seemed on edge, throwing strange glances towards him when they thought he wasn’t looking. It was beginning to grow tiring, to say the least, but Hermann was in no position to judge whatever or not their careful approach to him was in fact justified. Newton hadn’t told him much, and from his own flashbacks Hermann wasn’t able to tell what exactly had transpired between his collapse in the lab and him ending up tied to a hospital bed.

He could vaguely recall a sense of terror, the feeling of his own heart beating erratically when he had been brought in. And yet, when he tried to take a closer look of the mental images flashing through his brain, they all seemed to flee from him, refusing to stay in place for him to examine. Hermann was determined to ask Newton about it, if only to gain a better understanding of the situation.

If there was one thing he loathed, it was being left out of the loop.

Slowly his eyes skimmed downwards. His left arm was lying motionless on the bed sheets, freed from the cuffs for few hours now. Newton had been demanding for all of the restrains being removed - Hermann had never been made aware as to why they had been implemented in the first place - but after a short yelling match in the hallway outside of Hermann’s room was over, a compromise had been established: Newton was given the keys, but he was only allowed to unlock three of Hermann’s limbs. His right hand was still fastened to the metal railing running down at the side of his bed, but considering how painful it had been to wake up to have his injured leg tied in a similar fashion, Hermann saw this as a great improvement. The cuffs hadn’t been too tight, per se, but they did restrain his level of movement terribly. He was happy to see most of them gone. And he apparently had Newton to thank for that.

Speaking of the devil. Coming from the corridor, Hermann could hear multiple voices talking. One of them was definitely Newton, and judged by the booming baritone, Marshall Pentecost was there as well. They were appearing to try and keep their volume down, but in the silence of his room, Hermann was able to hear bits of the conversation going on behind the closed door. He could also see their shadows through the glass, Newton’s slimmer one looking rather pathetic beside Pentecost’s enormous figure.

“ -ve been saying all the time! We can’t just keep him in here, what the hell is that going to archive?”

“Doctor Geiszler, your demands grow more and more ridiculous as days go by. I am _not_ going to give you a permission, no matter what the doctors might say!”

There was a pause, possibly some nurses rushing by, before Pentecost’s voice continued in a more hushed tone, “It is a big risk, Geiszler. I understand your point of view, but my answer is still a no.”

The taller shadow vanished, leaving only Newton standing outside the room. Hermann wasn’t certain what exactly had been stated just now, but judging from the dark frown on Newton’s face as he stepped inside, it wasn’t anything promising. It took a moment for Newton to realize he was, in fact, awake and conscious, but when he did, the sour look was thrown out immediately, replaced by a wide grin spreading over his otherwise tired features.

“Hermann!” He walked in fully, pushing the door closed with his foot. “Dude, you look so much better already!” Hermann saw the way Newton glanced at the machines surrounding the bed, checking the numbers and lines. He had been doing that a lot since Hermann came to.

“Yes... Well, I do feel a bit better. The medication must be taking affect.” Which was true, he had been hooked up for over a night already, the continuous current of fluids flowing into his bloodstream. He was feeling slightly dizzy every now and then, and the horrendous fits of coughs hadn’t gone anywhere, but overall, he felt much more steadier than he had right after he’d woken up. “Is that what you were discussing with the Marshall?”

The color on Newton’s face flushed into a deeper shade of red. “Oh, you heard it, huh?” His fingers started to tap along the seam of his jeans. Hermann noticed, but refrained from commenting. “It’s kinda related to you, maybe? I dunno, I really shouldn’t be bringing this up now.”

“Newton,” Hermann said, a warning note of irritation present in his words. “I’m tired. My whole body is in pain. Every bit of my brain is sluggish and full of blank spots. I would appreciate if you wouldn’t keep any more things from me.” He glared at the man who had taken a seat next to the his bed. “Especially if they concern my current state.”

Newton was twirling his thumbs, his gaze refusing to settle on Hermann’s questioning eyes. “Yeah, but it’s not today’s problem, Herms. It can wait, nothing for you to worry your banged little head with.” He tried to give out a soothing smile. It failed masterfully, making Hermann all the more worried and anxious.

“I heard what the Marshall said. You were asking for a permission, and he told you no.” Hermann attempted to sit up, tugging at his tied wrist until he was comfortably leaning against the headboard. “What were you trying to get his approval for?”

Newton’s hand had risen on top of his messy hair. He was clearly unwilling to talk about the matter, Hermann could see that much. “It’s just a suggestion we’re still going over.” Suddenly he clapped his hands together, the loud sound startling Hermann enough for him to twitch. Newton gave an apologetic smirk before he talked again.

“Tell you what, I’ll keep pestering Pentecost about it, and next week I’ll let you know how it goes, huh?”

“Next week?” Hermann asked, taken back. “Do I have to remain off duty until _next week_?”

“Uuh...” The hand in the hair picked up its pace. “Might be a fair bit longer than that, dude.”

“But- My research! The kaiju!” Hermann began to struggle on the sheets, curling them into a knot as he went. He wanted to get out of them, to stand on his own. “I do not have time to be laying here doing nothing while the world outside is spiraling into a chaos!”

Hearing the end of the sentence, Newton’s head snapped up, a pair of unexpectedly excited eyes meeting his unease gaze. The look was so intense, Hermann halted his efforts, captivated by the bright expression on Newton’s face.

“But that’s the thing, Hermann! If my suggestion goes through, you won’t have to be locked up in here, ‘doing nothing’. You can help me out!” He smiled even wider, gaining a hint of that manic look he sometimes got sucked into when he was thinking of a new possibility surrounding his own field of expertise. It should alarm Hermann, and perhaps a few years ago it might have, but by now Hermann was so familiar with every aspect of Newton’s eccentric personality he merely raised an eyebrow to the man. At least at first.

“And how am I supposed to help you with your...” He trailed off, a scowl appearing on his lips. “You are not planning on running any untested experiments on me, are you?”

Newton’s fingers stilled in his hair.

“Oh mein Gott, you are!” Hermann exclaimed, sitting up with so much force that the railing clinging to his right hand rattled as he yanked it. “That’s what you were arguing with the Marshall!”

“Hermann, calm down!” Newton’s both hand were stretched out in front of him, a gesture putting some distance between himself and Hermann’s flailing arm. “It’s not like that! It’s more of a research expansion, I have some theories about the infection and -”

“And you have no way of knowing how your insane explorations will affect my health!” Hermann was seething, his knuckles white against the sheets. “This is a real treat for you, isn’t it? You just want to see how it all turns out, no matter what it could cost to me!”

He hadn’t noticed how tense Newton had become during his rant, but by the end of it he was practically looming over Hermann’s bed, his chair standing forgotten behind his back. It wasn’t often Hermann would see his friend truly angry, or hurt for that matter. Their jabs were typically brushed off by both of them when it came time to leave the lab for the day, never really brought up again unless they’d began a new war of insults very soon after the first one ended. But now Newton was equally as enrages as Hermann, and was not going to back down. The strange thrill ran through Hermann’s body when he realized it.

“Hermann.” Newton's tone was low, much lower than Hermann had ever heard it. “Do you honestly think, even for a second, that I would put my work before your health?” The layer of hurt was painstakingly clear as he spoke. “I mean, dude! What have I done to have you put so little faith in me?” He was looking straight at Hermann, and for once, not an inch of humor was peeking through his eyes.

Hermann let out a huff. He didn’t have an answer, and the thought irritated him more than it had any right to. The surge of anger, piercing and tempting, was lurking so close to the surface, ready to spring free from a slightest of prompts. It wasn’t as strong as it could have been, nor was it comparable to the frustration he usually felt while arguing with Newton. And yet Hermann had an odd feeling he had felt it before.

“Come on, Hermann! If you think I’m just gonna stand here and listen how you accuse me of -”

A realization hit him. It was similar to the feeling he’d gotten when the medics had swarmed around him. The sense of utter ire and aggravation. Mere moments after that he had lost the control completely, not even the flashbacks had remained. Only the memory of pain, despair...

“And after all I’ve been doing for you, too! Is it so difficult for you to admit that maybe -”

He had to shut it down. Just like he had done then. His thoughts, his racing mind, everything. He’d disconnected them all.

With a final glance at Newton’s direction, Hermann curled up on his side, turning his back to the man who was still talking, unaware of what was about to go down. It hadn’t been enough last time. Last time, something had happened, and his memory was deceiving him. There was no way for Hermann to know what he had done, but the cuffs were a proof on their own. He had hurt somebody. There simply were no other explanations. And he hadn’t gotten the chance to ask Newton about it. But the cuffs had been there when he’d woken up.

Now, there was only one pair keeping him still.

And Newton was the only other person in the room with him.

“Newton. You have to leave. Now.”

Newton frowned, his mouth opening to loudly object, “We weren’t done yet! I wanna hear you say -”

“Out! NOW!”

The sound of his own voice breaking, the screech alarmingly blaring in the empty space, came as a shock to Hermann as much as it came to Newton. But it had the effect he’d wanted: Newton, after sparing him a wide eyed, stunned look, dashed to the door leading out to the hallway. He did stop at the exit, turning back for a second before he slipped through the doorway. Hermann’s fingers were wrapped tightly in the sweaty sheets, shaking with contained rage. It burned all the way down, forcing his muscles to tense and tremble with effort.  

Newton didn’t want to go, Hermann saw it. But the biologist in him knew better than to argue.

After the door was pushed closed, the room fell silent once again.

Hermann buried his head into the pillow, bit the rancid fabric between his teeth, and cried.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that feeling when you decide to do something and then life comes around the corner and slaps you across the face, like "Nope, we're not doing that right now. Sorry mate."  
> But here it is at last, the chapter 7. Hope you guys like it, it was surprisingly difficult for me to write.

Had it been six days already? Or perhaps five? Hermann found it hard to tell. Newton, his only real vessel to the outside world, hadn’t visited him for a while, so his knowledge of the on-goings of the war and Shatterdome in general were basically nonexistent. After his ‘scene’ with Newton, the one where Newton was forced to leave the room when things began to escalate, there hadn’t been any visitors for him. It was difficult to maintain a stable understanding of the days going by when you were locked inside of a small space with no windows pointing outside or televisions to watch the news from.

Raising his head off from the bed, Hermann tried to get a look of the clock on the wall, the one exception to the rule of not knowing how much time had passed. It was 11 am, almost half past. Hermann could hear voices from the corridor; carts being pushed around, nurses shoes clicking against the floor, and the distant sound of a larger ventilation machine somewhere down the hall. He had listened to these same noises every day and it was beginning to annoy him. The room he was being held had nothing to keep his mind occupied, and the newspaper Newton had brought to him when he had first visited had been read through multiple times by now.

He didn’t have a pen so he could do the crosswords.

The worst part of the the situation was the fact that it left him with a lot of time to think. Normally Hermann would have appreciated, even cherished the possibility to simply lay down and let his mind work, but now the only subject his minds seemed to be interested in was the current state of his illness. And frankly, Hermann did not wish to contemplate that too much on his own.

He wanted details, and nobody thus far had been willing to give them to him. What had happened once he’d been brought to the infirmary was one of the burning ones. He _knew_ something violent must have transpired, why else would he be chained to the hospital bed? And he was certain that Newton was aware of all this, but for some reason refused to speak with him about it. It was driving Hermann crazy, laying in an empty room with nothing but his thoughts, theories and uneducated guesses, and if this would continue for a longer period of time...

“Hermann? You awake?”

The voice from the doorway caused him to turn. Newton was standing by the door, eyes darting around the room as if to make sure they were truly alone. Which was ridiculous, since Hermann hadn’t seen any doctors coming near him during his whole stay in the medbay. He suspected they took care of his medical needs while he was soundly asleep, making sure he wouldn’t be able to cause any more unintentional harm.

One more thing to question Newton about, certainly.

His attention steered back to the man still bouncing from foot to foot at the edge of the room. In his hand, Newton was carrying a bundle of keys, a bunch which he tossed in the air every now and then, a nervous tapping of his other hand keeping pace on his thigh.

“Are you going to prance over there whole day, or were you actually planning on coming in sometime soon?”

Newton’s head snapped up at his words and almost missed his catch when the keys came down from the latest throw. With a few fast leaps, he was standing beside Hermann’s bed, a wary smirk forming as he leaned over the railing and rested his weight against it. After so many days of solitude, Hermann was rather grateful of the closeness. It made him feel... less of a threat.

Flipping the keychain inside his fist, Newton glanced down at him. “Sorry I haven’t been here much.” He looked guilty, his hand rising to mess with his already curled heap of hair. “It’s just... I had some things I needed to go over with the Marshall.”

Hermann remembered. This was the conversation they had started, but never truly finished. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to open it up again, but Newton had only stopped to take swift inhale, leaving Hermann no time to speak before he continued, “I know you weren’t exactly thrilled about my... suggestion, but if you’d just hear me out and let me explain?” It came out as a question, his voice pleading. Newton was looking straight at him, eyes wide and flickering with caution.

Clearly Hermann was not the only one who remembered how their last talk ended.

Letting out a sigh, Hermann leaned back to the pillows supporting his head. The growing ache behind his forehead forced him slip his eyes closed. It was going to be one of those days...

“What did the Marshall say to you?”

As expected, Newton didn’t answer right away. In fact he took quite a while to talk again, the keys in his hand jingling as he toyed with them. Hermann was just about to repeat himself, but at the same time Newton decided to speak up, his tone suspiciously even and smooth.

“Pentecost is... Doubtful.”

“As he should be!” Hermann exclaimed, his eyes snapping open. “You’re requesting a permission to perform an unorthodox experiments on me, not to mention putting everyone in the base at risk while doing so.” He knew he was being overly harsh, but sometimes with Newton you had to lay things out as clearly as possible. “What if something goes wrong? What if somebody gets hurt?”

Newton frowned at him. “Who are you worried about, Hermann? Me, or you? Because if this is about me being safe, then lemme tell you -”

“No, that’s not what I mean!” A lie, and a blatant one at that, but Hermann was not about to go over his real concerns with Newton of all people. “You have to look at the bigger picture, Newton! What would happen _if_ things turned out badly, and there happened to be an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire?” His eyes followed the links of the cuffs. “I’d have thought we established this already...”

Slowly, Newton’s gaze fell on the chains too. Hermann saw the way he tensed, his shoulders pulling up even when he tried to keep his face as neutral as possible. He didn’t want Hermann to see. But an unspoken train of thought passed through both of them, the same mental image painted on their minds. Newton’s was based on the real events from a week ago, but Hermann had the unwanted ability to merely imagine what had happened back then. His vision was considerably darker than that of Newton’s.

And yet, when he looked at Newton and the earnest eyes staring down at him, the faint glimmer of eagerness started to poke its way upwards. He didn’t want to spent any more hours in the small, empty room full of machines of which he recognized very few. Sleeping the day away while the doctors danced around him, unwilling to face him when he was aware and wake. At least with Newton, he’d have control. Or perhaps the illusion of it, but it was better than having none.

Still, he hesitated.

“We can’t risk it, Newton. It’s dangerous, it can go wrong in so many ways.”

Newton fell silent for a moment. His eyes, however, never left Hermann’s.

“But what if it has a chance of going just right?”

With a heavy exhale, Hermann turned away. “That is quite a big _if_.”

The keys in Newton’s hand clicked against each other. Hermann’s eyes followed the movement. Why was Newton carrying those around? It’s not like they used actual keys too often nowadays, most doors opened with a key-card or required a fingerprint in order to work. Then, after a minute of thinking, he glanced at his wrist.

“Are those...”

“Yep!” The knowing, slightly smug smirk was back on Newton’s face.

“Tell me you didn’t take them without asking for permission.”

“I kinda kept them after we took off the first three pairs.” He waved his hand dismissively “They don’t even know I still have these, don’t you worry!”

The appearing of the keys was not at the top of Hermann’s list of concerns, to be honest. He was more worried of the fact that his loud and obnoxious lab partner had managed to keep them hidden from the nurses in the first place. The realization revealed a lot unwanted things from Shatterdome’s safety protocols, most of which played neatly to his current situation in the medical wing.

“Come on, Hermann.” Newton gave him a mocking thumbs up, his grin firmly in place. Before Hermann could say anything, he was leaning onward, taking the metal chain in his hand as he fitted one of the keys into the tiny opening. “The cuffs are gonna get in the way, and don’t you lie to me, dude. You want these off.”

Hermann couldn’t argue with that. It took him up until the weight fell off his arm to fully understand what Newton must have in his mind. His guess was confirmed when, after he was freed from the bed, Newton dashed around the corner, returning with a...

“Wheelchair, Newton?” The distaste in his voice was obvious enough to make the shorter man pause, his hands resting on the handles of the chair in question. It was Shatterdome’s general model from what Hermann could see, a modest movable seat held up by a metal structure under the leather casing. It looked like it had seen some use before, the rubber on the wheels being scratched off against the harsh floors of Shatterdome’s corridors, and the metal had twisted from two different points.

Hermann hated it as soon as he saw Newton push it in. He despised the very sight of it, and the mere thought of having to sat down on the worn-out leather made his skin crawl. When he was a child, he’d had the misfortune of spending a considerable amount of time in a wheelchair designed to fit him. A rather large, nowadays seen as ‘inconvenient’ piece of machinery, bestowed upon him by a doctor of his standard hospital. He had disliked it the moment he had laid his eyes on it, and the feeling had lasted all the way to the day he was finally deemed strong enough to support himself with a pair of crutches. After that came the cane, and luckily he had survived well while using it. But the intense revulsion towards the chair had remained.

Now, seeing Newton offer it to him, he felt his chest tighten with dread. He glared at the seat with a distrustful gaze, his inkling of Newton’s possible intentions growing in his mind.

“Why exactly do we need...”He gestured vaguely to the chair, raising an eyebrow. The more he thought about it, the clearer his suspicion became. Newton’s plan was far more complicated than he had let on, and Hermann had a feeling it would most likely include several phases of which they’d have a very different opinion of. For example, Newton was evidently trying to move him out of the medbay. Back to the lab, most likely. Why else would the chair be needed? In addition of it being the most logical conclusion, it was precisely the type of thing Newton would try to pull off and get away with it.

It’d also explain why the Marshall had been so fiercely against the idea.

“Hermann.”

Hearing his name made him look back up from the wheelchair towards the man standing behind it. The smile on Newton’s lips had dimmed a bit. He was looking serious, albeit he still tried to maintain a soft expression while he pushed the chair closer to the bed where Hermann was sitting.

“You trust me, right?”

He did. Of course he did, how could he not? Newton had been there with him for over a decade, if not in necessary friendly terms, then at least as a mental sparring partner. They were always together, no matter where in the world they had been located, they had remained at each other’s side. But Hermann was often forced to acknowledge that Newton had a bad tendency to get overly excited, usually to the point where he was not thinking clearly. Or rather he was thinking so fast that certain things such as basic human needs and overall safety took a back seat in his mind.

And that’s why Hermann had always been there. He was the ‘responsible’ one, the guy who took a hold of Newton’s arm when he was about to jump head first into another freshly made idea of his. Their relationship was a balancing act, and they were constantly attempting to tip the other off balance. All the while simultaneously preventing each other from falling completely.

Hermann sighed. “Yes, I do. But this... This is a lot to ask of me, Newton. You must realize that?”

The solemn look was still present and oddly enough, Newton’s eyes lacked their usual twinkle. “I promise dude, I’ve thought this through like hundreds of times over the week. I’ve got it all planned out.”

He seemed so certain just then. The overflowing confidence Hermann had always secretly envied about Newton. No matter what obstacle he faced, Newton was constantly willing to make it work out. And now when, in all honesty, Hermann himself _was_ the obstacle, the problem to be solved, he found he’d rather have Newton be the one to crack it open, as opposed to the nameless, unknown doctors of the medbay.

And so, he yielded. “Fine, we’ll give it a try.” He caught the way Newton perched up, and hurried to continue, “But if there is a slightest sign of this going off the rails, we are going to come back here immediately and inform the staff.”

Newton’s lips had curled up to a grin wide enough to split his face half. He was basically bouncing on his feet, his sweaty hands tapping at the handles.“Sure thing, Herms! Right back here at your command, got it.”

It sounded even less convincing than Newton’s usual lies. And Hermann let it slide.

“Oh, I’ve got to try and lift you up a bit. Gotta get this chair close enough, like so...”

The sound of metal scraping against metal echoed in the room, and Hermann felt his bed jolt with force.

“There, all good! Now I’ll just pick you up and we’re golden. Hold still so I can get my arms under you -”

They might be back in here sooner than he’d hoped.

* * *

“Slower! Slower!”

“We don’t have time to snail around, Hermann! Gotta get through the hall before anyone else sees us.”

Hermann squeezed the metal armrests of the wheelchair hard enough to turn his knuckles white with effort. “I think I might throw up if we keep going like this!”

Newton’s suppressed chuckle didn’t carry too far in the empty corridor, and Hermann almost missed it in his hurry to try and maintain his grip of the chair beneath him.

“We’re almost there anyway, so try to keep your insides in check until then, yeah?”

Easier said than done. As they rushed alongside Shatterdome’s narrow hallways, making sharp turns around the corners, Hermann closed his eyes and attempted to think something else altogether. However, the constant wobbling kept him from immersing into any relevant patterns of thought.

“Newton, please. We are going to tumble over if you don’t slow down!”

A soft snort he got for an answer sounded dismissive at best. “Everything is going fine, dude. Besides, the door is right ahead, I can see it already.”

True enough, the double door leading to the lab had come into the view when they rounded the last corner and came to a full stop before it. As to be expected, the doors were closed, a thick metal wall looming over them in the silent hall. Hermann was left sitting in place while Newton jumped forward towards the doorway, the bounce in his step more prominent by every step he took.

“It seems to still be sealed off,” Hermann called out, stretching his neck to get a better look at the panel where Newton was standing. He was pressing buttons Hermann wasn’t able to see, typing in a password required to access the recently closed-off areas of the base. On their way, Newton had told him about the outbreak, and how Hermann himself had apparently sealed the lab before the medical team had come and picked him up. He had a hazy memory of doing parts of this, but mostly he’d have to rely on Newton’s words as he described the Skype call he had answered from the lab. Again, he remembered some bits of it, but was unable to see the whole picture.

Now, sitting in front of the doors leading to the same space where he had almost died a mere week ago, Hermann couldn’t quite squish down the feeling of dread that lurked inside him.

Fortunately Newton’s high-pitched voice wrenched him out of such concerns. “It _was_ locked down, but I talked to Tendo a while back and he told me that the disinfection is all done. I’ve been inside the whole week, that’s part of the reason I wasn’t visiting you at the medbay.” A bright smile was aimed at Hermann just then, the screeching of the metal doors opening guiding Newton’s attention back to the task at hand. Newton’s code had evidently worked. “It’s like entirely clean now. Much cleaner than it ever was when I was in there, anyway.”

As the doors moved apart, the panel next to them began to flicker with a green light. Newton input yet another row of numbers and then spun around to look at Hermann with a grin. “All done, your highness.” He gave a mocking bow, laughing loudly when Hermann let out an irritated huff from where he was sitting.

“Marvelous. Shall we get inside before the whole Shatterdome hears?”

The reason why they were at the lab in the first place was still a bit unclear to Hermann. Earlier Newton had said it was mainly for the equipment he’d need if they went through with the planned experimentations (of which Hermann knew a alarmingly little about). It was also the most secure space to store Hermann in case of an emergency or if things got out of hands during the process.

“Okay, in we go!”

Hermann blinked, surprised when the chair was being pushed on the move again. With a few fast steps, they ended up inside the dark, unlit laboratory, the only source of faint lighting offered by the lamps on the ceiling. They were obviously running on an emergency power, and if one listened closely, it was possible to hear how low the air conditioning was operating. The air in the room was stale, a telltale sign of Newton’s reluctance to put the space back to its original use as long as he was the only one using it. There were no indications of what had taken place here, no pieces of kaiju on a trolley, no mess on the floors.

“They did a fine job at it, right? I had to move my samples to the containers once they were done with them, so I might have to ditch you for a moment to go and get them.” Newton’s babbling kept on going, but Hermann was letting it simply wash over him. It was comforting, in a way, to be in a same room with him after a week of being apart, and hearing the continuous flood of speech helped to ease the clenching pain curling in his chest.

“Y’know, I think the cleaners even took photos of your blackboards before they wiped them out. Look, there’s a pile of them here!”

“They did?” Hermann asked, rolling the chair across the room to the desk where Newton was leaning, a stack of photos in his hand. As Newton had said, they were all pictures taken of his calculations, patterns of numbers showing well against the black background, easy enough for him to copy in the near future.

“I never saw these when I came in last week. Must be Tendo bringing them in while I was out,” Newton said, flipping through the pile. “Shame they had to remove your boards, though.”

Hermann glanced to the other side of the lab where his workspace had been. The large blackboards which normally covered the main area of his part of the room were gone, and his desk had been pushed all the way to the back. When Hermann let his eyes wanders, he noticed that the boards were the only things missing, aside from an odd computer here and there, most of which they had never bothered to use anyway.

“Why did they remove them?” Especially since everything else seemed to be on left alone, more or less.

Newton’s cheeks flushed lightly, and the nervous habit of drumming the fingers of his left hand against his thigh revealed the uneasiness he felt. “Umm... Well, I spoke to the cleaner guys when they were pretty much done, and the dude said something about not being able to disinfect the surface of your blackboards. The material is not compatible with the stuff they used, or they were worried it might not end up working long term...”

“But why just my boards? Surely there must be other materials they were unable to save as well?” Hermann knew he was making a bigger deal about this than he probably should have, but he was rather fond of his blackboards. It felt like losing a piece of him in a way, having an extension of his body removed from him without his consent. And after his stay at the medbay, he wanted to have control. Even if it was over a minor, meaningless things such as this. “Why are your samples allowed to stay?”

“Oh, you’ve got no idea what a fucking hassle it was to get those disinfected!” Newton’s hands shot up and Hermann quickly rolled himself away from them, saving his face from getting knocked out by one of them. “The guys who ran the op had only seen small parts of kaiju before. They wanted to just get rid of my bigger pieces, can you believe that shit?” Hermann certainly could, considering he too had often fantasized of tossing Newton’s more sizable specimens into a garbage can. But he chose to stay silent, merely watching as Newton went on.

“And when they finally got my stuff out, they said I couldn’t get them for three days because they ‘wanted to make sure they’re safe to use’. Since _when_ have kaiju parts ever been _safe to use_!”

Hermann snorted. “Never when they are given to your custody.”

“Haha Hermann, a comedian, are we?” Newton said, but the creases on his forehead began to fade away, a mild smile rising again. “The point is, I’m gonna have to go and fetch my things before we can get started. Shouldn’t take too long, they’re just in the storage room.” He frowned, scratching his head as he turned to look at the door leading off from the lab. “Although I’m not sure where exactly they are in there.”

With that he darted off, leaving Hermann to stare blankly after him while struggling to get up from the wheelchair. His cane, which had been lying on his knees since they left the infirmary, helped him to regain his balance and despite feeling a bit ill on his feet, Hermann managed to limp his way to the nearest office chair. It gave a small squeak under his weight.

In the stillness of the lab, Hermann allowed his eyes wander around, noticing little details which had escaped his attention when he had rolled in. The piles of paperwork had gone missing from both of their desk. Disposed, most likely. He looked towards the sink installed to the other side of the room and could see how clean the tabletops were, not a trace of Newton’s half-filled coffee mugs or unwashed equipments. As he moved his gaze to the left, a large tank came into his view. He had seen it before couple of times, Newton having used one to temporarily store a huge chunk of kaiju tissue when the freezer had been full to the brim. Now the tank was sitting in the middle of the room, the glass surface transparent and clear, and an odd set of machines set beside it on the floor and nearby tables.

Just as Hermann was about to roll his new, much more comfortable chair over to take a closer look at the machinery, the door to the storage room popped open and Newton stumbled inside. His hands were filled with small vials and a long cord of what looked like a copper wire.

Seeing Hermann near the tank, Newton lifted his arms, grin wider than Hermann felt was necessary. “Hey, I got them! All of my stuff is here, they just moved it out of the way!”

“Marvelous,” Hermann muttered, glancing at the glass flasks which contained liquids in multiple shades and colors. “And what is this, then?”

Newton had already settled his burden on the tabletop next to the tank. He was excited, and Hermann saw the way his legs were bouncing to their own beat as he walked.

“These are the samples I got from the kaiju pieces last month.”

Hermann remembered the occasion well. The smell had lingered in the lab for days. “Aha. And what are you going to do with those?” His tone was kept firmly in check as he glared at the vials, but the mask was paper thin. The thumping of his heart was picking up, and he could feel the cold sweat creeping along his spine.

Newton didn’t seem to notice anything to be amiss. He began to spoke faster and faster, his enthusiasm visible to anyone who cared  to look. All the while rearranging the bottles on the table. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, man. I just figured we should probably compare your blood samples to kaiju’s tissue, just to see if it matches, y’know?” Newton’s hands were remarkably steady when he picked up one of the containers, peering inside with a critical eye. “Your doctor gave me access to your medical data, so it’s not like I had to steal this one.”

Squinting his eyes, Hermann saw the name scribbled to the side of the vial. His own name greeted him with a capital letters. “Is there any reason for them to match?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but the nagging voice inside his head forced him to ask anyway.

“Well, considering the infection _is_ originally found in kaiju flesh, I think it should at least be checked,” Newton said. “Not gonna hurt to be certain.”

And that raised another topic to the surface. One of which Hermann was even less eager to talk about.

“Newton, I want...” He began, stopping when his friend spun around to face him properly. The green eyes stared at him so openly, and for a moment a painful flash of guilt build up in Hermann’s heart. “I need to ask you something.”

Seemingly oblivious, Newton tilted his head. “Sure, dude. Shoot away.”

Taking a calming deep breath, Hermann asked the question which had bothered him ever since he woke up after the medbay. “What happened between the lab and the handcuffs?”

The paleness on Newton’s face increased immediately. His steady hands, a moment ago completely even and confident, started to shake a bit, and he was forced to put the glass vial back down on the desk.

“Uhh... You really don’t have any memory of it?” he asked, his fingers tapping on the jean’s fabric. “Like, any at all?”

“Mere fleeing images.” Hermann sighed and rubbed his hand against his temples. “And those aren’t too clear, either.” He wouldn’t admit that he’d had troubles of separating which of his recollections were in fact true, and what was merely a product of his bored, confused set of brains. “I’d appreciate it if you would tell me directly.”

The tapping took off and Newton assumably noticed it himself because he squeezed his fingers into a fist, tugging them inside his pockets. “You sure you wanna hear it?”

Their eyes met. Neither one of them looked away.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” With one sleek motion, Newton pushed Hermann’s chair further back and pulled another one for himself. His posture was rigid, much more so than Hermann was used to seeing.

“Basically, you beat up a nurse with your bare hands while the staff was trying treat you.” Newton didn’t take his eyes off of him. “You smashed her to the bed and then hit her in the head when she was down.”

Colorless, and without emotion.

Newton was merely stating facts, keeping all of the emotion off from the topic.

But he looked at Hermann. The whole time.

And didn’t flinch when Hermann lifted an uncertain hand towards his. He simply took a hold of it, brushed his fingers over Hermann’s cold knuckles. And didn’t let go.

It took him some time, a rather long time in fact, but eventually Hermann felt the lump in his throat ease enough for him to talk without embarrassing himself with ugly sobs.

“I -” His voice cracked. “I’d like to apologize. To tell her -”

“She knows, Hermann. Trust me, she has and will see much worse if she’s planning on working in Shatterdome for longer than two weeks.” Newton’s voice had a soothing edge to it, the words flowing silently. Suddenly he leaned closer, making Hermann bend his neck in order to maintain their shared gaze.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know that right?”

It was true, and had he been in any other type of situation, Hermann would have agreed completely. He couldn’t recall any of this. So why was his chest curling up tightly, hindering his breathing until it felt like he was drowning?

“I... I would like to believe it so,” he finally choked out, his eyes stinging. “Thank you Newton,” he continued, trying to summon a ghost of a smile on his lips despite the pain. “For being honest with me. It is a trait I find I regard quite highly these days.”

Wanting to move on from the topic as well, Newton smirked back. It was a stiff one, but a true attempt nonetheless. “Hey, no problem. If it makes you feel better, I can bash your past mistakes all over every day.”

Hermann was trying to suppress the snort of amusement, but parts of it slipped through, brightening Newton’s expression even more. “See, now you’re actually starting to look like my Hermann!”

“Yours, huh?” Leaning back on his chair, Hermann shook his head. “How about you tell me about this questionable plan you have cooked up before you go on saying such ridiculous things.”

“Bossy as ever I see,” Newton said. He stood up abruptly and walked over to the tank. The vials were held securely in his hands. “You wanna me to explain the whole process, or just what we do for starters?”

“The beginning will do for now.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know the rest. It’s just that with Newton, it was easier to go along his plans if one was not entirely certain what was waiting ahead.

Especially since Newton’s plans tend to change halfway through.

“Okay, so it’s actually nothing too grand as of yet,” Newton said while fiddling with the copper wire. He was feeding it into the tank, then connecting it with one of the machines outside. “I’m just gonna pump some chemicals, mainly serotonin and testosterone into your bloodstream while you’re in here.” He tapped the tank’s glass, the hollow sound echoing in the room. “Not too much, obviously, but enough so we can see how it affects your behaviour while I test your triggers.”

“My... triggers?” Hermann asked, confused. The whole arrangement was rather worrying, to say the least, but the last bit made no sense to him. “What do you mean by that?”

The machines surrounding the tank whirled to life as Newton danced around them. He pushed buttons in each one, then swirled back around to look at Hermann.

“Yeah, triggers. I have a feeling that if we can point out what caused you to act violently in the medbay, we can use that info to tackle the infection altogether.”

Hermann frowned. “But wouldn’t you think the infection as a trigger itself?”

Newton shook his head promptly, securing one last piece of equipment to the machines beside him. “You weren’t hostile all the time, Hermann. And when I came to see you afterwards, you acted pretty much normal, remember?” He was turning serious again. “There’s something in your brain that causes you to go off without a warning. We just have to figure out what it is.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Hermann muttered. His body was growing tense with nerves. “What if something goes wrong?”

“I have your meds right here,” Newton said and picked up a little bag from under the workdesk. “This is the same stuff they gave you in the infirmary, and I’ve poked enough kaiju parts to know how to inject a needle.”

“Not exactly helpful, Newton.”

The other man shrugged and let out a low chuckle. “Hey, I’m just lightening the mood here. I’m sure we'll be fine, and if not, well that’s why we’ve got the tank.” He rapped at the glass again. “This baby is strong enough to keep you in check until I can hit you with the needle.”

Eyeing the tank from up close, Hermann had to agree it looked rather solid. It had no cracks to be seen, and it had multiple layers melted into its build. It would hold. It’d have to.

“So I just... Climb in?” He pushed himself up from the chair carefully, glancing at Newton as they both approached the sea of devices and cables. “Am I able to breathe in there?”

“Yeah, I installed a small ventilation system at the top. It circulates the air in and out, so you can stay there for as long as we need.” Newton was rushing ahead, opening an almost door-sized panel at the side of the tank. “There is a locking mechanism in place too, just in case. Keeps the door closed no matter what.” He looked slightly hesitant, his eyes searching Hermann’s for confirmation. “Do you wanna use it?”

“Yes, please.” Drawing in a sharp breath, Hermann stepped inside the glass walls, leaving his cane to leans against the workbench. “Oh, and Newton,” he called out before the door was pulled shut. “If I die in here, I want you to know I’ll come back and haunt you until the end of your days.”

The sudden shift in the atmosphere made Newton to laugh out loud, the noise bouncing off the bare surfaces and carrying all over to the inside of the tank.

“You sure you wanna those to be your possible last words, dude?”

Hermann’s voice was muffled by the glass, but the huff in it was still audible. “Just turn on this darn machine!”

The humming of a warmed up engine filled the lab, and a billow of smoke broke loose from the box on the floor. There was a static charge coiling in the air, the energy of it raising the hairs in the back of Newton’s neck upwards.

“You ready?” His hand was already resting on the control panel.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Newton nodded, eyes gleaming keenly. “Okay, here goes!”

He pressed the button.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shorter one, the next one WILL come during end of the week. I just need to get this part out now because my schedule is such a mess at the moment.

Nothing happened.

Hermann, having already squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation, took a careful peek. The inside of the tank was unchanged, the thick walls still a see-through and despite him being able to hear an engine rumbling outside of it, he couldn’t really see anything being different.

“Uuh, Newton?” He called out, pressing one of his sweaty hands against the glass. “Is everything alright?”

A ruffled heap of hair appeared to the other side. In Newton’s hands was a small controller, not unlike the ones used for gaming consoles. “Yeah, why’d you ask?”

“Nothing is happening.” He glanced at the machines outside the tank. There were some lights flickering, but otherwise there was no indication whatever or not the process was already on the way.

“Oh yeah, it just needs a moment to get ready. And I haven’t pumped anything in there yet, we’ll test the air flow before we do anything else.” Pressing few of the buttons on the controller, Newton started the ventilation on top of the glass walls, a silent humming of the shifting air now filling the tank. It made the space where Hermann was forced to stand feel colder and he tugged his sweater closer to his body without noticing. His slacks were a bit too thin for comfort, but he’d manage. 

“So, what are we going to do while waiting?” Hermann asked. He leaned against the support of the tank’s wall. “And if you say ‘play 20 questions’, I will come and shut this air flow off myself.”

Newton let out a loud burst of laughter from where he was standing next to the main control panel. “Harsh words, man! But no, I thought I’d take a looksy at those blood samples of yours while you sit there like a good boy and listen what I’ll find.” A knowing smirk appeared on his lips. “I will even let out criticize my findings if you’ll play nice.”

The holder where the vials of blood had been waiting was moved from the side table to the small desk beside the panel. With a practiced ease, Newton snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, reaching and lifting one of the bottles up and peering inside. 

“Seems to be in good shape. You’ve got really cool-looking blood, Hermann.”

Hermann sighed. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“I mean, if you appreciate your vital fluids, then yeah, it is.”

“That is a rather repulsive way to put it.”

Newton didn’t honor the statement with an answer. He was busy trying to set the small dose of the blood into a clear plastic surface of a chemical scanner they had brought in once the other science sections of the Shatterdome had been shut down. It could break the matter into tiny particles, and then analyze the end result to reveal what it was consisted off. Up until now, they’d had a very little use for it, but Hermann was more than glad Newton had talked the Marshall into giving it for them at the time being. Hermann himself didn’t know how to use it, nor had he any desire to, but watching Newton spin around it, pressing the buttons and connecting wires, he was immensely relieved to have the biologist here.

“I already cut us a piece of kaiju, so I’ll just stick that sucker in at the same time. We can look at them side by side, see if they match,” Newton said while the scanner blinked to life. The blood sample was pushed in, followed by a tiny bit of a kaiju flesh, dissected in a way that the inner parts of it were visible, the bluish color of its blood smattered over the plastic pad.

It had a projector connected to it, no doubt an addition made by Newton. It didn’t take long for the machine to break down the samples given to it, and when Newton clicked on a flashing icon on the scanner, two pictures appeared, on the empty back wall the projector was facing. It was a blank wall, not cluttered with posters or electrics, and the photos were clear enough that even Hermann could see them well through the thick glass.

On the left, he assumed, was his own sample. A blotch of reddish substance, glittered with small rectangular cubes. On the right was the kaiju piece. It did differ from his, that much was certain. It looked far more lumpy, filled with chunks of matter, all in different sizes and shapes. Despite his apparent dislike for the field of biology, Hermann did gather a bit more understanding for Newton’s obsession the longer he stared at the projections. It was fascinating, seeing his very existence presented to him by a tiny particles swimming in a placid fluid.

Mesmerizing was a fitting word for it.

“It’s pretty, huh?” 

Newton’s voice brought him back to present, and with an embarrassed cough for getting caught, Hermann nodded. “Yes, it is rather... captivating.”

“It sure is. And what’s more interesting is that they match.”

Hermann’s head snapped up at that. “What?” 

Seemingly talking to himself at this point, Newton gave a half-minded nod as he went on, “The surface of the proteins is similar in structure. That is so cool! It’s like you have both been coated with a same stuff, even though the base form is different.”

Casting another look at the projections, Hermann tried to see what Newton was talking about. And after a while of intense staring, he could see it; the small dots laying over the exterior of the cubes. It looked identical to the coating on top of the kaiju sample’s surface. It was barely visible, but it was there. And it felt like a punch in Hermann’s stomach.

“This is awesome, I didn’t actually think they’d be so much alike! Just, wow! With this info we could -” Newton’s excited rambling cut off the second he turned around and got a look of Hermann’s pale, wide eyed face.

“Oh, no! Herms, that’s not what I...” He set the hand-held controller down and rushed to the tank where Hermann was still staring at the results with unblinking eyes. Slowly, his gestures gentle, Newton planted his hand against the glass separating them. He knocked on it lightly. 

“Hey, Hermann.”

The silent tone ripped Hermann’s attention off from the pictures, thankfully. A weak wave of shudders ran through his body, but they were gone as soon as they arrived, leaving him leaning on the glass heavily.

“They do match.” He was muttering, but they were now close enough for Newton to hear anyway. “It hasn’t been flushed away yet. It’s still in there.” A slightly trembling hand rose from his side, the stare directed at it jittery. “It’s inside, no way to get it out.”

Just as Hermann was about to drive his nails into his own flesh in an attempt to scratch it all off, Newton slammed his fist against the wall, startling him out of the haze. 

“Hermann, put your hand down.” The levelness in Newton’s voice forced him to obey, and he haltingly lowered his arm. 

“Good. Now you’ll look at me, right in the eyes, and listen what I’ll say, yeah?”

Blinking owlishly, Hermann nodded and locked his gaze with Newton’s determined one. There was a glint of resolve in Newton’s eyes, and Hermann found he couldn’t look away from it.

“Next I’m gonna shut the scanner off and store the samples. Then we will start the experiment. We take it slowly, one step at the time. If you start to feel like this again,” he made a gesture towards Hermann’s still shaking hand, “then we’ll pull the plug and think of something else, okay?”

Hermann simply nodded. What else was he to do? Everything felt floaty and unreal, the ghost of an itch under his skin growing all the while. But Newton looked so calm, confident. He knew what he was doing, and for now, Hermann was willing to let him take the wheel.

He trusted in Newton more than he trusted himself.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read through it but there might still be misspellings and grammar error here and there. Feel free to point them out, I am blind to them at this point.

He was excited, there was no denying it. Even though he knew it was probably wrong of him, Newton couldn’t suppress the sensation of wonder and thrill running through his body as he stood outside the tank. It was fascinating, all of it! How could he not feel weightlessly giddy, staring at the most prominent development of his field of study in years? The solution to their sorrows might very likely be glaring at him through the glass, the changes in Hermann’s bloodstream a key to unlocking the knowledge needed to defeat the kaiju for good. It filled him with so much adrenaline that for a moment he was forced to bounce his right leg up and down in a rapid motion. The search! Discovery! Answers, after such a long time of nothing!

It would, however, be unwise to show this outright. After all, the experience was far from exciting for Hermann, who had now sagged against the glass between them, one hand pinned to the clear surface of it. Newton could see the slight tremor, no matter how still Hermann was trying to be when their eyes met.

His voice was low, muffled partly by the glass. “Aren’t you supposed to store those samples before they begin to rot away?”

Unable to help the little grin climbing on his lips, Newton huffed and took a step back, putting some distance between them and finally turning around to mess with the scanner. The machine had already spitted out both the kaiju piece and Hermann’s drop of blood, and it didn’t take him too long to file them away and push the cart carrying them into the small storage they’d came from. When he made it back to the lab, Hermann was standing up straighter, although his weight was evidently rested mainly on his good leg.

“Sorry, if I’d have found us a bigger tank, it would have had a chair bolted into it,” Newton said while crossing the room and halting by his improvised workbench. “Must be pretty bothersome for you to have to stand there this long?”

Hermann gave him a weak attempt of a smile. “Actually, after my time in the medical wing, I find I greatly appreciate the chance to use my feet instead of being cuffed down on a horizontal level.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that kinda taxing for your leg?” 

“Perhaps, but I still prefer it over the infirmary.”

Fair enough. Shifting his attention back to the task at hand, Newton flipped up one of the main switches on his left. Few lights flickered to life soon after. “Well, if you wanna take a break at some point, just lemme know. If we start to pump some more shit in there, it might take awhile before we can let you out.” He had already retrieved the hand-held controlled of the engines and was in the process of starting up the machine hooked to the tank properly. Under Hermann’s watchful eyes, he pressed couple of the buttons and opened the airflow completely, allowing more clean air to rush inside the tank through the filters at the top. 

“I am aware of that, thank you. But the sooner we get this started, the sooner it will be over.” 

It would be easy to miss the beat of uncertainty coloring Hermann’s words. Newton didn’t. In fact he heard it loud and clear, and because of it he left the control panel’s side with a long step forward. If he was going to put Hermann through what he suspected he’d have to, the least he could offer was a little moment of comfort beforehand.

“Hey, it’ll go just fine,” he said, rapping his knuckles against the glass. Hermann flinched back at first, but soon leaned in closer, trying to hear every word. “This bad boy could hold a miniature sized kaiju, it sure as hell won’t break if a lanky mathematician decides to smash his fist against it!”

“That is... oddly comforting,” Hermann muttered, sliding his spread fingers over the surface. “It’s not that I have doubts for its durability, I merely am a bit worried about the outcome in general.” The shakiness was back in his voice.

“So, anything particular you are most bothered by?” Newton asked. He would answer to best of his abilities, and if a concern came up to which he didn’t have one, he was willing to cook something up to sooth Hermann’s nerves. It was his area of expertise, and he was confident he would be able to calm Hermann’s raging nerves at least to a manageable degree.

Across from him, Hermann’s face was turning contemplative, brows furrowed together as he went over the details. “If something  _ does  _ go off the rails, you do have a backup plan, yes?”

“Of course!” It might still be slightly in development, but that seemed irrelevant. “Anything else?”

It was obvious that Hermann knew he was purposely changing subject. The pained glare told him so, but nonetheless the man moved on. “Have you informed the Marshall about all of this?”

Newton coughed into his fist. “ _ Inform _ is such a strong word -”

“Newton.”

“Okay, look.” Newton stepped closer, spreading his arms, “Maybe he is not completely aware, and maybe it’s better if it stays that way for now? You know what he’s like, he’d try and meddle...”

“That’s because it is his job.” Hermann knew he should be more angry. Furious, even. But in all honesty, he was growing increasingly more indifferent despite his need to ask in the first place. It was a habit, the necessity to voice his doubts no matter how small. “Promise me. If this goes south, you contact him  _ immediately _ . Not after you’ve tried fixing it yourself, not when it is too late to take action. Immediately.”

There was a quick flash of a pout on Newton’s lips, but it was gone as soon as it had appeared. “Yeah, sure dude. I’ll call him up if you go apeshit or decide to drop dead.” The teasing edge was barely audible.

“I’d very much like to avoid the possibility of death, if at all possible?” Hermann said, rolling his eyes. “Although given your track record with the experiments you have ran thus far, it might be a bit too much to hope for.”

“Hey!” Newton exclaimed, but Hermann saw the small twitch in the corner of his mouth. No real offence taken. “I happen to be the most talented person to do this sort of thing in the first place. I mean have you seen the amount of wires I have lying all over the floor? If that doesn’t scream top level science, I don’t know what does!”

Hermann’s gaze swept over the surroundings of the tank, and true to Newton’s words, the floorspace was covered with thick cables, some of them marked with colorful pieces of tape. He didn’t understand any of it, but then again, practical engineering had never been his cup of tea. 

“I see. So, based on your confidence, do you think we might start this show anytime soon, or is the engine still warming up?” He was happy to notice how little his voice was trembling. He sounded much more level-headed than he felt.

With a long side-step, Newton took a look at the control panel. After a few tweaks, he nodded to himself. “Yeah, it seems to be in about right temperature for now. It has started to run some background programs as well, so I just need to add the chemicals when we wanna begin.” He pressed a button near the bottom of the panel. “But before that, I need to try something first. So if you’re cool with this, we can start the experiment now?” 

It came out as a question, and Hermann had to take a brief inhale before he managed to speak again. “Yes, we’ll... We may begin.” His fingers curled into a fist at his side.

“Nice!” Leaving the controls alone, Newton swirled around and gave him an apologetic grin which put Hermann on edge. “Alrighty, so... Just like I mentioned, I want to attempt something before we go and mess with any of the chemicals.”

“You said as much, yes,” Hermann muttered. “Care to elaborate?” 

“Well, you remember when we talked about your triggers earlier?” Newton asked, voice low and gentle, “Like, what might set you off, so to speak.” Hermann nodded, and Newton went on, “So, I have few ideas as to what those could be. The triggers, I mean.” He took a deep breath. “I think the doctors are the main one. The hospital setting too, but mainly the doctors.” 

Newton glanced at Hermann, waiting for an objection or perhaps an arrogant scoff. Neither came. Hermann was simply looking at him, one hand braced against the glass of the tank. He had one of his eyebrows raised, prompting Newton to carry on. “Does... Does this sound like a possibility?” Newton asked, carefully and with a light tone. The last thing he wanted was to Hermann beginning to feel like he was being interrogated or blamed for it. However, when he had thought about it over the days, Newton was 95 % certain he had hit home with this one. It made sense. The most severe fit Hermann has had was due to the medical staff’s present in already stressful situation, causing him to lash out in a way that hadn’t repeated when he was left alone. It seemed that the cause of the violent behavior was the increasing of certain hormones, paired with an already existing source of distress. Newton wasn’t entirely sure if the hormones themselves were strong enough to force a creation of a violent act without any help from the environment, but he seriously doubted it. 

He was startled out of his thought when Hermann cleared his throat and began to talk.

“I suppose... It would be accurate to say that my past experiences in such settings have not been exactly pleasant.” His eyes shot downwards, breaking the eye contact between them. 

Without answering, Newton reached out for the light switch on the wall on his left. The bright light at the ceiling flickered shut, leaving them with a ghosty atmosphere from the much dimmer night lights. As the source of light vanished, Hermann casted a questioning glare at Newton. “What was that for?”

Newton waved him off. “Nothing to worry about.” His voice was dropping low again. Something unsettling squirmed in Hermann’s stomach at the sound of it. “Alright. We are starting now. I’ll go and fetch few things from the storage, you’re okay to stay here alone for a bit?” It wasn’t really a suggestion, more of an acknowledgment of the situation since Hermann had no way of actually exiting the tank on his own. He gave his friend a tentative nod, trying his best to ignore the rising sensation of dread filling his chest.

He was safe. He was with Newton, in a kaiju-proof tank. In their shared lab. Anything that could happen would stay within these walls. Still, he threw a worried look towards the tiny holes at the side of his container. Large for a needle to fit through, yet small enough to prevent him from reaching out. 

It was part of the plan. Newton did have a plan.

Hermann certainly hoped he did.

Before he had time to wrap his mind into a more complex knot of anxiety and fear, the door leading into the storage slammed open, and a figure stepped inside the lab.

It wasn’t Newton.

In the dim light, Hermann wasn’t able to make out the person’s face or even the color of their hair. It was all covered up by a plain mask, lifted high enough to hide the nose and mouth. Their body was dressed in a long coat, white in color. Around the neck was a stethoscope, metallic and shining slightly in the faint lighting. 

Hermann’s heart rate picked up.

The figure didn’t stop at the door. Instead they made their way across the room, shoes clicking on the floor as they drew in closer. Their eyes, invisible behind the glasses, were nailed on the tank. They didn’t slow down. Simply walked over the cables, not sparing them another glance.

Unconsciously Hermann took a step back, jolting as his back hit the glass too close to him. The airflow in the tank must have failed because it was getting increasingly difficult to breathe, and the thumbing in his chest was growing loud enough to drown out the sound of the figure’s swishing jacket. The smell hit him, a scent of lysol and chloramine turning his stomach around. It forced him to gag. Nothing came up but the sense of tightness in his throat didn’t ease. It became worse, much worse, and in a moment’s time his skin was tingling, the feeling of itch spurring him to stand up straight despite the protest of his injured leg. 

He hadn’t noticed, but the masked figure had came to stop outside the tank. Everything turned over, and before Hermann had a chance to regain the control, his fist slammed against the glass wall. The impact of the hit was enough to rattle the whole tank, but it held up. 

“ _ Geh weg. _ ”* It wasn’t his voice, not really. This one was hoarse, coming out through gritted teeth. In his mind’s eyes, Hermann saw his own hand rise up. The shakiness was gone, but the veins on his palm were pulsing out. There was a desperate note in the back of his head, urging him to back out himself, but the surge of vile anger smothered it. His own body was shutting him out.

The figure, so similar to those which haunting Hermann’s dreams during bad nights, lifted a hand. Between his gloved fingers was a see-through cylinder. 

A needle. 

“ _ NEIN _ !” The wretched scream tearing its way out from his throat echoed inside the tank, bouncing along the smooth surfaces. He couldn’t breathe at all. The pressure, the weight against his chest was pushing him down, and he lost his balance. The terror was settling in like a piece of ice, and still he wanted to... He needed to strike before -

“Hermann! Herms, it’s me! It’s just me!”

There was a voice calling out, but it was blurry, the words messed in together forming no comprehensible sentence for him. His heartbeat was too loud, it filled the air and there was so little of it to begin with... He would suffocate, die here if he couldn’t find a way to break out...

“HERMANN!”

It took him by surprise, the needle pushed through one of the openings and driven into his flesh. 

“There we go. I’ve got you, dude! It’s just me, see? I’ll take this off...”

It was hard to focus. The whole world seemed to be tilted, and it took him a while to realise that it was in fact his body which was resting against the wall in a bend angle. Across from him, behind the glass, the unmasked figure was morphing into something else. Something more recognizable, a heap of brown hair sticking up as the coat stethoscope was slung onto the nearby table. 

“I’m so sorry, Herms.” A pale hand caressed the outside of the tank. “It felt so bad to do, but I really didn’t have much of a choice.”

His chest felt heavy, but his eyes were starting to remain focused. However, the scent lingering around him made him heave once more, a dry sound sickening in the silence.

“Oh wait a sec, I’ll turn the odor off! It was supposed to help setting the mood, but I think I maybe overdid it...”

A louder humming sound filled the space, and it instantly became easier to breathe. Shakily, Hermann pushed himself upwards, his eyes blinking and gaze empty. He felt sick, but oddly calm. Sleepy, even. A complete opposite of the wave of rage he had sensed mere moments ago.

“Are they helping? The meds?” The voice now sounded worried, and a realisation hit Hermann a bit after he managed to raise his head high enough to take a proper look forward.

Newton, his eyes wide and mouth pressed to a thin line was staring at him, unblinking and trembling. “Can you hear me, dude? Does it... Are you hurt? Is it coming down?”

Hermann gave a small nod. It was all he was able to offer, his head still spinning and throat tight. 

“Should I amplify the airflow? And the lights, I should turn on the lights.” With that said the man rushed to the panel and after a few minutes the main lighting of the lab kicked in, followed by a screech of an engine as Newton turned the air conditioning of the tank up. The stronger winds of air relieved the pressure in Hermann’s lungs, and he took in several gasps of it before it was all cut off by a abrupt grinding noise of metal brushing against metal.

The lights wavered, then shut off. 

The airflow did the same.

“Oh, come on!” Newton jumped up and run a hand through his hair. “It’s the fucking fuse! Why do we even use those things in here -”

He didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence before the back-up power hummed to life, the emergency lighting returning to the lab and restoring the basic form of airflow into Hermann’s tank. An orange light, usually unlit and unnoticeable, was beginning to blink though. In his current state of disorientation, Hermann didn’t pay any attention to it, but Newton noticed. A warning light, no doubt perfectly identical to the one installed into the control center where employees were always watching, keeping an eye out for incidents and odd abnormalities...

A sharp beep broke through the air, coming from a laptop propped up on one of the tables further away.

even from where he stood, Newton could see the LOCCENT logo flashing on the screen.

A video call incoming.

His stomach lurched. 

“Well, it has been a while since I last saw Pentecost’s forehead vein in all of its glory.”

The look Hermann gave him was withering enough to shut him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Geh weg = Go away


End file.
